


Where East Becomes West

by prplmunky, starkyd7



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire & Related Fandoms, A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV), Original Work
Genre: F/F, F/M, M/M, Other, Where Dragons Go, femslash simmer, pay no attention to the worldbuilders behind the curtain, stick them with the disappointy end
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-06-02
Updated: 2019-12-20
Packaged: 2020-04-06 08:20:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 20
Words: 38,689
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19058848
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/prplmunky/pseuds/prplmunky, https://archiveofourown.org/users/starkyd7/pseuds/starkyd7
Summary: Because we were as upset at that ending as everyone else was and I harassed a Starky enough to have her come out of retirement.Alternatively: What IS west of Westeros?





	1. Prologue - Dany 1

**Author's Note:**

> All things pertaining to ASOIAF belong to GRRM and possibly HBO.
> 
> Everything else is the original intellectual property of myself (prplmunky) and starkyd7 and will be pursued accordingly if copied without permission.

Her world was cold and darkness, vast and empty. An endless eternity of quiet and calm. It was restful. She no longer had to fight, or to lose those she loved. It was an end to all the violence, and she had wanted that so badly.

Hadn’t she?

A pulse of light pierced the blackness. A rapier slash the color of spilled lifeblood, the same crimson of the Targaryen standard. It was the thread of her life, she knew, slim as it was, still clinging faintly to the world she was born into. Clinging to the destiny she had fought to fulfill.

 

_. . . three treasons will you know . . . once for blood and once for gold and once for love . . ._

 

She was sick of life, sick of heartache, but the cord thrummed, pulsing in time to a rhythm so familiar it often synced her heartbeat.

It was the thrum of dragon wings.

She reached out, with everything she had left, and wrenched herself back into a world she hated.

 

\-----

 

Dany opened her eyes. It was still dark, but not the endless black. This was...different. She felt stone under her back, unnaturally warm yet comforting. Stone at her back and, beyond a grey haze that coated the sky, the faint pinpricks of starlight. She had expected pain. The dagger had sunk deep, the teeth of betrayal sinking furthest of all, but she felt nothing of the wound that had once been mortal.

Where was she? An afterlife? A penance?

She wriggled her toes, then fingers. They were all where she remembered them, at the ends of her limbs, also intact. Gathering her strength, and finding a shocking reserve as well, she rolled to her side and looked around, squinting a bit in the near darkness.

Six glittering ovals winked back at her, reflecting even the faint starlight in their scaly surfaces.

Dany started in shock and pushed herself up off the strange stone floor until she was almost seated. The remnants of her dark queensgarb slithered off her skin and rasped against the rock. Only the front remained, and as she turned the leather over in her hands she could feel the edges of the sturdy material crumble into ash. She dropped the garb and felt for the intricate braidwork of her hair. There was only smooth skin under her hands. Her platinum locks had kindled to flame. The stone below was more than warm, it was the heart of an unseen furnace.

She stood up to her full height, letting all the scraps fall away from her. The last time this had happened, Daenerys Stormborn had become Mother of Dragons as her old life fell away from her like so much ash on the wind. Her second life had ended as Ruler of the Seven Kingdoms, what future was left to her? She had mothered, she had conquered. Daenerys Targaryen had loved and lost and bourne the weight of it at the head of an army. Who was she now, alone on this rock?

She felt the close alcove open up to one side once she stood. It must have been a ledge of some kind. Dany slowly scuffed her feet towards that feeling of open coolness. Nothing but darkness greeted her, save the haze and the starlight. She began to turn and a spurt of yellow green light belched up from the darkness far below. It startled her and Dany took a step back, feeling something crush underfoot as she did with the sound of shattered pottery.

_The eggs!_

She dropped to a knee where she was and blindly scraped against the smooth floor, searching. A sharp edge bit into her palm and she withdrew with a pained hiss before gingerly returning her hand to the spot and scooping it back up. The shell was cold to the touch, brittle where the others had looked supple, and no light reflected off the surface. Dany could scarcely see it. It made little sense. She turned back towards the wall. There, even with her partially flash blinded eyes, she could make out the six shapes of the eggs she had woken to, still gleaming.

Dany knelt down and swept her arms around this hollow, shattered shell and gathered the fragments to her. it seemed important, she could not say why.

She was on the edge of a mountain, the hottest of mountains, with a clutch of dragon eggs and no way to escape, but she was alive. Dany curled up with her fragments, naked and warm on the strange stone, and slept, waiting for the pinprick stars to give way to dawn.


	2. Arya

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have also thrown up all my notes to give some semblance of completion to When the Sun Rises in the East to give that some closure, but most of you have probably already read it. ;)
> 
> And because it panics Starky about credit where credit is due, all the prose is mine, and will be for some time, but she is helping quite a bit with the upcoming world building, so I didn't feel right putting only myself on here.

**Arya**

King’s Landing had little in the way of provisions that weren’t desperately needed to feed what little remained of its populace, but ports along the Dornish coast were happy enough to pack _Seawolf’s_ hold full of citrus, salt pork and hardtack in exchange for real gold in their hands. Her crew was partly younger Northmen with some seagoing experience, mostly younger brothers barred from inheriting that hailed from Bear Island. The rest were out of work sailors from King’s Landing that she had interviewed herself and chosen after a few pints of ale and an hour playing the Game of Faces. The Northmen had nothing to go back to, and the local sailors flocked to her like crows on a battlefield after she told them she was sailing west of Westeros.

Her ship was a refitted scouting sloop from Queen Cersei’s armada, one of the few that hadn’t been commandeered by the Ironborn Admiral Euron Greyjoy before turning to so much ash against a vengeful dragon and her obedient child.

Though Arya didn’t fully trust the queen that Jon had allied with, she had to admit that the Targaryen’s style had a certain...flair to it. The last living dragons did much for utilizing shock and awe struck terror against an enemy of much greater numbers and tactical advantage. Her charisma was sharper than any blade, and her soldiers fought with a zealous loyalty rivaled by none.

But she was a warrior, a killer, and those with that much blood on their hands were ill suited to rule during peacetime.

_“You'll always be a threat to her, and I know a killer when I see one.”_

Which was why Arya was leaving, and leaving with these boys who had cut their teeth on skirmishes and bloodbaths, where every enemy you cut down rose up again as one of your own. She saw those blue eyes still, every time she closed her own. She had ended the Night King, but he still held her in his grip, slowly choking the life from her until he claimed it as his own. She could not stop it if she stayed. Her life would be forfeit in this new era of peace. It would be subtle, through drink, or starting fights until she found an opponent who could best her. Her death might even be by her own hand if her thoughts grew dark enough and she saw no other way. She knew herself well enough, at least in this. If she stayed, it would come, the same as the fool King Robert’s had.

So she needed to get away, as far away as anyone _could_ go, and the unknown and uncharted sounded best of all. No one would know who she was out there, no one would want her to be a ghost from their past. Not Jon, not Sansa, and especially not Gendry. She would be free.

Her experience as Salty from Saltpans helped her captain, but she was not Salty anymore than she was Lady Stark or the future Lady of Storm’s End. She was Arya, and becoming Arya instead of No One had already taxed her to famine, she would not become anyone else. If she was being honest with herself, which she tried to do these days, she didn’t have the strength for it anymore. It would be easier to just let it all go, and if she doubted herself in this, that is exactly what she would do, so Captain Arya sailed her crew into the unknown horizon and prayed to gods she had spurned that somewhere out there would be land.

They would find it, or they would slowly starve on fish as their teeth fell loose and they ran out of clean water.

_No, there will be land._ She knew it in her bones.

There had to be.


	3. Where Dragons Go

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Off to a no wifi zone for the weekend, but I do think you'll enjoy this before I go.

**Dany**

She woke to a wet, squishing sound that gave way to sizzling and the irresistible scent of cooking meat.

Dany opened her eyes in delighted confusion, her stomach growled and rumbled within her, recognizing the meal even before she did. A large haunch of...something lay next to her on the small stone ledge. Dany spared a glance towards the area where the yellow green light had burst from last night.  A cracked mesa of patchworked land greeted her, accented by a few small geysers that gave periodic bursts of noxious looking smoke that added to the overall haze of the sky. Was this Old Valyria then, is that where he had taken her?

The sizzling smell gave way to burning and Dany’s hunger pangs transformed to nauseous disgust as she remembered the terrified faces of the common folk. Innocents running from her as she burned the city.

_They deserved it._ She told herself this a thousand times after and would continue telling it if she could make herself believe it, but she didn’t, not really. Daenerys Targaryen, for all her high minded ideals about equality, had become as lowly as the pillaging rapist, exerting power because she could, and because no one could stop her.

No one but herself, and she had failed. Not just failed, but failed to even _try_ to stop herself.

Now she understood the madness that plagued her line. It wasn't insanity, it was loss of self control. Ruling over fire incarnate freed them from the drudgery of living like lowly mortals. Targaryen dragon riders wrote their own code, and she had done just that. It was the only course left to her, the one everyone had expected, even Tyrion.

So why did she feel her soul tearing, ripping itself to shreds until there was nothing inside but emptiness?

Little puffs of steam burst at her feet as even her tears left her behind. Dany irritably scrubbed her hands across her face and turned her attention towards the now scorched haunch.

She needed to eat. If she did not, Daenerys Stormborn of the House of mad Targaryens, First of Her Name but never to sit the Iron Throne, the Unburnt and entirely lost, failed Queen of the Andals who loathed and feared her and the First Men who betrayed her love and confidences, Khaleesi of the Dothraki who would never return to the Great Grass Sea, Breaker of Chains who then abandoned her freedmen, and Mother of _one_ surviving Dragon who was taking far better care of her now than she ever had of her children, this pitiful body she inhabited would perish here, on this too hot rock where only dragons dwelt, and she would find out which religion correctly guessed the afterlife.

She sat down next to the chunk of...lamb, she guessed, the last tendrils of curly wool turning to embers where it touched the hot stone. With no knife to speak of, she tried to prise the meat apart with fingers that shook from fatigue. Were this a lamb, she might have succeeded, but Drogon killed for volume and this mutton was the toughest he'd found in their long history of shared meals in forgotten places. With no other recourse, Dany used the only cutting edge she had brought with her and mauled at the surface of the meat with her teeth. Blackened grease and blood smeared her cheeks but she didn't care, she bit, clenched her jaw until the tough meat separated, then chewed and chewed until she could finally break it down enough to swallow. Dany became so engrossed in this task that when a tiny body jostled against her for space on the kill, she almost choked.

Supple, sinewy flesh covered the not quite scaly body, dark in color but shining an iridescent purple in the sunlight. Silvery eyes blinked at her for a moment before the tiny dragon went back to the kill, nibbling off tiny chunks in the same manner Dany had.

She turned to look at the eggs. One was empty, presumably this tiny dragon next to her, the others were in various states of hatching. The closest shell to the empty one held a brilliant green dragon with golden eyes that shone like the newly minted Dragon it was. It had sawed through the pliant shell with its teeth and wore the cut piece like a hat, slowly blinking and looking about as it took the world in. The next furthest along was the last egg at the other end, it had torn a seam in the shell and various body parts would poke out before retreating, first a nose, then a tiny clawed foot, the scales were dark and looked black, but the viscous slime coating all of the hatchlings made it hard to know for certain.

The other three were wobbling and...breathing? The soft, scaly surface of the eggs, so different from the stone she hatched her children from, undulated as it bulged and shrank from the life struggling within it. She watched the three unhatched eggs for awhile, almost hypnotized from the soothing patterns. Instead of sinking back, one of the bulges kept pushing up. Up, tenting further and further outwards until the thick skin surrounding the tiny dragon split open and a toothy yellow-gold snout pushed out for one fleeting moment before vanishing again.

She repeated the ritual for the last two. One snout was dark as the sneak peek dragon, the other a dun grey as the entire dragon burst forth from the egg entirely. It sprawled across the hot stone, stretching out its limbs and sinking belly down into the stone to nap away the exhaustion. The dun grey dried to a sparkling silver-white that was almost unbearable to look at, and when it raised its tiny head to sniff about for the kill it blinked at Dany with eyes the same color as her own.

This clutch did not at all follow the breeding rules of men, horses, or even hounds. Dragons were a world apart, and their eggs would not fall into line any more than their impossibly flighted wings would.

A shadow passed overhead, eclipsing the sun, and the tiny hatchlings began to peep and chirp in excitement. The iridescent black and bright silver clamored to the edge of their little plateau and Dany followed after, mimicking the tiny dragons as they peered down to look.

Drogon’s patient red eyes stared back at her and she felt, as she had not in a while, that she was no longer in command of the largest of her offspring. Unblinking crimson looked at Dany, then through her to something beyond. Dany turned and looked at the swept up fragments of dragon egg shell and understanding struck her.

 

_“Only death can pay for life.”_

 

The clutch had been seven eggs when Drogon had laid them, if it even had been Drogon. Her children hunted far afield and it was only a matter of hours for them to arrive in places that would take weeks for a man on foot, and King’s Landing was much closer to the ruins of Valyria than Winterfell. Seven eggs hatching into six tiny dragons and…whatever Dany was.

Drogon tossed his head and she went to him, unable to refuse. He had repaid the blood debt that had woken the dragons from stone, and her still beating heart was now a debt owed him. A wing appeared from below the ledge and she wrapped her hands around the thick layers of bone and tendon before she was lifted and unceremoniously tipped onto Drogon’s back. Dany clung to him, every second of the sudden dive upwards into weightlessness burning to memory. Up they went, then higher, the fractured islands allaying all doubt as to her whereabouts before they headed towards open water, the misty chill driving her closer to the winged furnace below her.

Then further south until the air became temperate and the water cleared to a crystalline blue and a tiny coast appeared. The shoreline was blinding, white sand as far as she could see until it vanished into a treeline and a lush jungle. Was this Naath, or perhaps the Basilisk Isles? It was beautiful, whomever dwelt there. Dany felt a wave of tension bleed out of her as the warmer air relaxed muscles she hadn’t known were clenched.

Then Drogon turned west, their horizon point the fiery ball of the sun. Dany shut her eyes and burrowed her face into the sturdy scales against the light that stung her eyes and the wind that leaked tears from them, though perhaps they were caused by neither.

She lay like this for a long time, dozing when she wasn’t sobbing, sometimes looking up to see the bright orb dropping lower and lower until the ocean seemed to swallow it up. Dusk changed the sky to hues of orange and faded purple, the color of dying embers.

She saw a sparkle of light then, from somewhere in the sea. A ship with a mirror? But there was no light to reflect, and the spark had been white, not the orange of firelight. Drogon banked hard and dove straight toward the point of light, flaring his wings to drop speed when it flashed again. A rumble grew below her, familiar, but without her command. A blast of dragonfire scored the surface of the water and it frothed and bubbled, steam rising up and surrounding them in a misty cloud. Drogon spun again, flying in a circle, low and tight, before letting out a sky shattering roar and incinerating the water once more. Dany’s world listed after the last gout of dragonfire had died and Drogon was spinning, his back tilting until her grip as she hung on with all the strength she could summon.

It was not enough. One became two as she felt herself part and fall away, skimming the surface of the water until she slowed and Drogon continued on without her. Dany felt the water suck at her limbs, leaden now after so many hours of huddled lethargy. She thrashed, choking on water as she cursed herself for not learning to swim. She cupped her hands, tried to pull herself up to the surface and managed a half breath as Drogon trumpeted his farewell and the sparkling white light passed across the night sky. Drogon had taken her such a long way for a simple drowning, why would he wait, driving himself for all those endless hours?

It was this thought that engulfed her as she managed one more strained half breath and the water closed over her head.

She sank, feeling the water chill below the boiled surface that Drogon has prepared for her, she kicked out, trying to propel herself back towards fleeting air, and stubbed her toe on a rock.

_A...rock?_ Her thoughts were muzzy but her instincts were not. She dropped down the last foot and sprang back up using the muscles in her legs and the buoyancy of the water. The gasping breath as her head broke the surface was the sweetest she had ever taken. The light flashed again and she pointed herself towards it. Flail, sink, leap, breath, repeat, on and on again until her muscles burned and her salt burned throat ached and the waterline receded to below her chin, her toes curling into rounded rocks and squishing sand. Then, and only then, did she allow herself to rest for a moment.

Dany walked the rest of the way, feeling the tide tugging at her with play instead of deadly malice. She walked until the water was below her knees, when the one sparkling light gave way to many many points of light and carefully masoned stonework. She heard voices then, heavily accented but with words she could almost make out. Warm hands clapped her on the shoulder and a friendly bearded face looked at her from the light of...it was glass, and it was very bright, but held no candleflame. She could make out the Valyrian, heavy with accent.

“Rest, you are safe.”

And so she did.


	4. Arya

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Shortish, so will probably post another Sunday night or Monday to make up for it.

**Arya**

Fifty three days since _Seawolf_ had left Starfall. Fifty three days into their westward journey and Arya had begun to doubt the cleverness of her plan. She could have sailed the Narrow Sea from the Wall to Dorne and back again and still had a week leftover to plan a feast. Scant few mouldering hardtack biscuits remained from stocks she had thought sufficient. She discarded the inedible black pocked portions, which were nearly half of the biscuit these days, and peered into the crumbling surface for weevils. Something wiggled and she plucked it loose, mincing the wriggling meal between front teeth that ached. They were crunchy and bitter, and moved, but she had eaten worse in her time.

Her men, what few remained, still fished, but the fish here were large, too large for their meager lines. More often than not a tug led to an excited reeling that brought up nothing but frayed cord. They were almost out of hooks. A few weeks back they had managed to use boarding hooks and pikes to stab a friendly porpoise that sidled too close to the railing. They had just barely gotten a net beneath it before it sank beyond their grasp. Arya and her crew had eaten well that night, and breakfasted on a too salty soup of stewed skin and bones. They had caught nothing since.

Her navigator was useless. He lay in the hull most days, moaning and itching at the reddening patchwork that covered his skin. He was in good company, with rotting food and rotting men. No rats though, it was three weeks since their last spit roast.

_He would be the same use on deck as in his cabin._ Which is why Arya was alone at the stern, taking respite from the smell of sick and shit. She looked to the sky, it could have been dusk or dawn. She saw neither sun nor stars beyond the thick blanket of fog that had engulfed them three days back. The captains of Westeros and Essos navigated by sun and coastline. She lacked both

Which was fine, since her sails were slack and empty as a cut purse.

_Seawolf_ was beautiful, and she was Arya's, but two sails did not a galley make. She knew she should be resting, even courting the fickle, dream filled sleep that eluded her these days, but she did not. Some weathersense pricked at her, despite the soft fog that ate even the sound of the wavelets rocking below her feet. The still air tickled, caressed, and then picked up force. The soft fog turned into stinging mist as the water lanced her skin. The deck jerked beneath her soles and drops loud as scorpion fire smashed around her on the tarred wood. She opened her mouth to yell and got a half breath of water for her trouble. Her clothes were heavy, her limbs weighted and she staggered as her feet squished inside her boots and her footing slipped. The wavelets were no more. Arya slid across the floor and slammed into the dripping wood that surrounded the tiller. She could not think, there was only the roar and the slip slide of her useless feet as Arya banged against one railing then slipped back for an unwanted charge against another. She had not heard the telltale crack of splintered bone, but the deafening water hid much.

Arya managed to latch two slick hands on the rails and a shaking foot against a corner, halting her back and forth motion. She could make it to the hold, warn her crew, she had to. Arya took a steadying breath, just in time to feel her stomach lurch up into her throat as she fell from some fathomless height. No, not falling, dropping, because the water was no longer beneath her.

It was coming towards her, so tall there was no end. It was only the churning wall of blue black crystal that came, so close she could reach out and touch it.

Mesmerized, Arya saw her hand reach out, her fingers grazing impossible glass. It was cold, so very cold.

The pane shattered, burying her within it.


	5. Gull-Cry

 

**Gull-Cry Wind-Speak**

It was dawn-break and Gull-Cry was sharpening his dive knife. He took the flat stone, pungent with fish oil, and stroked it down the blade.

_Snik._

He loved that sound, loved it almost as much as diving.

_Snik._

Away came the little red spots, and the dark metal shone beneath. He peered closer, trying to see if the abalone had pitted the-

"Pay attention, useless sand-for-brains!”

Gull-Cry ducked his head as fingers ruffled the short hair. Better fingers than the flat of her hand.

“Missed me, Auntie.” He sheathed his knife and sprang up, dancing just out of reach on the edge of the bamboo platform that bound the canoes together.

“Stop grinning with that too-hungry mouth, boy.” Bead-Piper started to raise her hand again.

“Auntie, I’ll just dive away and then no one will be keeping storm-watch.” Gull-Cry said, and _almost_ kept the smile off his face.

The sky rumbled. Gull-Cry turned to look out across the water. What he spotted drowned their quarrel.

"Did you see the size of it? There's no canoe that big even in Dragon-Sing."

"No," Bead-Piper said, "there's not. I'll get the Elders, you stay here and put those roving eyes to work."

"Yes, Auntie…" The bamboo strained and creaked as she walked away but he barely heard it. Gull-Cry stared out, transfixed by the unusual vessel on the horizon. _Where did they come from?_

The floor underfoot shifted and Gull-Cry flowed with his canoe, felt his stomach drop a little.

A wave was coming, maybe even big enough to be a Dragon-Lash, sent from the angry tail of  _Karak-Roh_ himself. Worried cries erupted behind him and they changed course, paddles splashing in a frenzy. Wind-Speak knew. Yes,  Wind-Speak knew, but those strangers didn't. Gull-Cry watched the far-off ship do nothing to prepare, not even bind their sails. Didn't they have oars?

The splashing of paddles increased and Gull-Cry saw the canoes in his flotilla dip and rise in the water next to him before leveling out. The wave had passed them, they were safe. It crested up before them, majestic, a true work of _Karak-Roh_ 's power. He could hear prayers behind him.

If he looked hard enough, he could just make out a person on that canoe. They stood up and faced the Dragon-Lash, they didn't cower, didn't shrink. They stood tall, even when the wave crashed and swallowed their canoe whole.

Gull-Cry took a breath and dove into the still churning foam. His body came alive in the water. It was cold, colder than usual, but none of this was usual. He opened his eyes, felt the slight sting of the salt. _One day I'll find a sparkle big enough to trade for Less-Than's eye-cups._ Today was not that day, and he had bigger worries. He had to claim that person before they breathed in Sea and _Karak-Roh_ came to eat their water bloated corpse. Gull-Cry kicked his feet, his arms paddling faster than any dive before while he tried to get the drumming of his heart to slow. Too many beats and his air was gone. He focused in on himself, letting his arms and legs work while he calmed. He would make it in time, he _always_ made it in time. He was a Diver and he would act like one, not some silly child pretending before she grew up to be a Fisher.

The beat slowed, and he made it slower still, he would need every moment. He swam lower and the water squeezed his chest and made his ears ring like gongs. That's when he saw the stranger. They were sinking to the floor, little slower than a dropped rock. Gull-Cry swam down, down into the dark until he felt his head would burst apart like a fallen melon. He reached out and grazed his fingertips against the stranger. Missed.

He tried again, reached further, until he closed his hand around their belt. He gripped tight as his hands had ever held, tighter than the first sparkle he ever saw, and then swam up. Up meant air, up meant freedom from the water that crushed his chest like the great jaws of _Karak-Roh_ himself. Up meant that he, Gull-Cry, would be the one to bring the stranger to Wind-Speak, not Dark-Dive or Fish-Swim, it would be Gull-Cry’s name they wove into songs.

He kicked, then kicked harder when he moved too slow. The stranger’s weight dragged him down. He would not give up, he was a Diver and he would live. Gull-Cry would dodge _Karak-Roh_ ’s belly this day, he was sure of it. Sure enough that when his now useless legs thrashed and left his one free arm to climb up out of the depths, he did not breath in.

His eyesight darkened to black and his heart beat faster and faster as his body howled for breath, but it was only weakness dying. His limbs moved, slowing with every loud throb of his heart, until he broke the surface and took in that sweet air of Sky.

Sound rushed back to him in a roar as Gull-Cry lay upon the surface of Sea. He forced his legs to move and paddled with his free arm to drag the stranger up to the air with him. Dark hair long as a new chosen Fisher half hid closed eyes, maybe he was too late. No, he wouldn’t give up, they had students of Dragon-Sing with them, who knew the secrets of breathing Sky and beating heart. The stranger would live, if only Wind-Speak could find them. Gull-Cry took a breath deep enough to dive with and turned his face to Sky.

He screamed.


	6. Minnows

**Charo**

 

"Shh! What was that?"

"It was _water_ , Cha, it's _always_ water."

"Fine, it's water, until it's not." 

"If you want to turn back now, go snuggle up into a Minnow pile, then that's your business, but I'm staying here."

Charo wanted to do just that, to go back to sundown and tell Maig her supér plan could go float with the Rafters, because that's exactly where it belonged.

Instead he had nodded, eager as ever, and fallen for the promise of loot beyond even Maig's wild imaginings. She'd found a Junker, somehow, and it was tethered. Tethered and unguarded.

Tethered meant it hadn't yet dumped its treasures into the waters off the Scythe. Charo could swim a little, but he was no Fish-Man. If they could get to it before the Tradesmen…

"Where is it tethered, Maig? The Harbor? Under Rivalé?"

"Better," Maig said, "it's anchored a little ways out by the Scythe."

"The _Scythe_?" Charo took a breath to speak further.

Then blew it back out at a glare from Maig. She was crazier than a Chronist when it came to her plans, but saying so just pushed her even more.

"How we gonna get there? Can you swim out to it, cuz I sure can't."

" _I've_ got a boat waiting."

"Whose boat?"

"Doesn't matter, Cha, just matters that we're gonna use it." She peeked up at the lone alleyway gaslight, like she was thinking about something. "We're going to the Junker, and you're going to get me there."

Rowing, he could do. Charo just had to stay in the boat and he would be okay. Maig turned a corner out towards the water's edge and there was…

“Maig!” Charo hissed. “That’s not ‘a boat,’ that’s a _Raft_ , we can’t steal _that._ ” Where were the Rafters that were supposed to be on it anyway?

“It’s fine.” Maig continued walking towards it like nothing at all was the matter. “I know the Rafters, they won’t be back for at least an hour, and by then we’ll be long gone.”

So Charo wouldn’t be rowing, he’d be poling instead.

“This one’s yer Da’s then?”

“That oaf is _not_ my father, but yes, if you must know, this is Jerar and Fil’s Raft.” She pointed towards a group a little way down the shoreline. “Fil’s dicing with the Shiners until Jerar gets back from pressing whatever sorry pay he got this week into my mother’s palm.”

“But Maig,” Charo pointed at the light outlining the crowded group on the sand, “He’s got the lantern.”

“Oh, I’ve got a plan for that.” Maig reached into the ever present sack strapped across her back. It was almost as big as she was, but she would never let Charo touch it, much less carry it. He heard the tinkle of glass clinking together and Maig pulled out two slender vials. They shone a dim blue and Charo knew exactly what they were.

“You got Flash-Sticks? From the Fish-Men?”

Maig rolled her eyes, Charo knew this, even in the near dark. “They’re called the Wai-Tau, lack-a-wit, and yes, I have Flash-Sticks.”

Charo wondered how she had managed, since they were very expensive when the Fish-Why whatevers managed to bring them to market. They were supposed to be filled with tiny creatures that glowed when you shook it. To him it just looked like a bunch of floating dust in the day, but at night…

At night they shone bright as a coalspirit lamp, if only for a few minutes.

Maig stepped onto the raft, careful not to jostle the sticks too much. They would need that light.

"You coming?"

In answer, Charo felt out into the night for his footing, poking about until his bare toes skimmed the surface of the raft. Then, and only then, did he press more of his weight onto a surface that dipped and rocked beneath him. Charo slid off the tiny pier that was the Shallows’ excuse for a dock. It was only a foot or two above the sand, depending on the tide, but the Rafters thought it was better than beaching everything on sand and trying to tug it out later, so the Holdfast built it. That height was plenty though, and the raft tilted much more as he sank onto it, dipping into the water until it rose halfway up his foot.

“Cha, get in the middle, wouldja? Else we’re gonna capsize in the first few seconds of our voyage.”

Ever obedient, Charo shuffled his way to the post in the center of the raft. A pole jutted up in the middle with an iron hook at the top. That hook was for a lantern. It was empty now, as that lantern was still out dicing on the beach.

"Here." 

Maig nearly smacked him with the pole before he caught it. Charo twisted the wood around in his fingers until he felt a wet patch and almost dropped the thing. Canal water was...canal water. It made Détente run, but it would never be something he wanted to swim in. Rafters collected the worst of the worst, and who knew where they’d been poling before this. He shucked his hands back in the other direction until he felt dry wood in his palms.

“Close to shore or out on the water?” Charo asked, dipping the long pole into the water. 

“In between.” Maig said. “It’s not far out.”

Charo pushed, feeling it press through the soft layer of mud at the bottom before he hit anything solid enough to launch from. The raft moved slightly, and he tugged the pole until it jerked free. Squish, push, jerk, drift; over and over again.

It got darker as they drifted from the shoreline and the lights of the city faded. Maig kept the Flash-Sticks still and dark though. Their short lived light was very bright and very, very blue. Once they used them it would be all too easy for competitors to spot them and steal their haul, even Charo knew this. He kept poling and it got tougher as they went. Soon his back and arms were burning and his breath came short and ragged.

“Where's...is it...s’posed...to be?” Charo panted. He let them drift and tried to stare out across the dark water to see if he could make anything out.

“Just over this way.” Maig said. “We’re close, almost-”

A blast of fire lit the sky, and Charo saw the Junker’s outline flash in the red-orange light before it disappeared.

“I saw it, it’s over there!” He shouted, his voice sounded far away. Could fire be loud? He poled towards where he had seen the Junker, the outline burnt into his eyes as a purple-white flare. Charo tried not to turn his head and follow the image.

“Cha...what _was_ that?”

“Dunno,” he took a deep breath as the sweat started to drip off him, it was getting pretty warm, even for the rowing. “You got any ideas?”

Another wash of fire light and Charo saw Maig’s face turned up towards the sky before a thick wave of black closed again. He heard her gasp.

“It’s...I mean, I _know_ what I saw but it doesn’t make any sense.”

“Saw...what...Maig?” Okay, now it was _really_ getting hot. Charo wiped a sleeve across his dripping face.

“It was _a dragon_.”

Charo couldn’t see Maig, but he could hear the grin, knew it anywhere. She was hatching a plan.


	7. Arya

**Arya**

 

She woke up vomiting.

Everything hurt. As if the illusion were true and the water _had_ been glass. It had scratched at her eyes, gouged her throat, and flayed more skin off her body than she wanted to think about.

Her chest ached most of all.

She heaved, until her insides felt like fire itself and there was nothing left within her. Then, and only then, did she collapse on the strange deck below her. Her head throbbed as voices around her chattered in words she couldn't understand. Arya tried to open her eyes and regretted it. The bright light of the now risen sun stabbed her sight like an unkempt dagger. She rolled over, tilted her face below, to where her hands cupped rounded wood poles, and cracked an eyelid open. She saw colors and vague outlines, but nothing made sense. Arya slitted the other eye and she could make out the deck below her. The foreign material blurred into focus, but not memory. Arya turned her head a little, seeing if the sun was still too-

No, it was very much still too bright. Back to the poles for her eyes. She tried her voice.

“Wh-” She coughed, trying to make sounds with her shredded throat. “Where...am I?”

The unintelligible words seemed more excited, but that was all she got from them. 

“Alone, half dead, my ship gone, my _crew_ gone,” her voice cracked and she swallowed the pain down, “and with a people who can’t understand me. A girl is foolish indeed.” Arya sighed, at least sighing didn’t hurt.

“Foo-lace?” A deep voice parroted

Arya looked up in surprise and immediately regretted it. Her skull throbbed and red lights danced on the backs of her now scrunched eyelids. She waited for the pain to subside, tried to think. What was different? How could they understand now and not before?

It was Valyrian! Dealing with remorse she had no control over made her chastise idiocy as she had in Braavos. The first confused half conscious question had spilled out in her native tongue of Westerosi. She tried again, keeping her movements much, much slower this time as she turned to look at her surprising conversationalist.

“You...hear me? You speak this tongue?”

“I does...hear...spake some.”

The crouched group around her was silent now, quietly staring with eyes that looked...were they silver? They seemed to reflect the sea and sky around them. One of these strange people was speaking to her. A slim man who looked hard as the poles beneath her feet. He had those same reflective eyes framed under dark brows and long hair that blew free in the wind. 

“This one...called...Wind-Sing.” He reached out a hand, the skin dark as fire cured timber.

Arya took it, grateful, and allowed herself to be hauled up so that they were eye to eye. Which they were, to the level. Arya had many talents, more lethal than not, but height had never been one to rely on. Their hair was dark as hers was, and silver was nearly grey, wasn’t it? She was just far more pale than they were.

“Many thanks, Wind-Sing, this one is Arya.” She waited, diplomacy grappling with the urge to find out what became of _Seawolf_ and her crew. Her practical mind was certain they were all sitting at the bottom of the sea, but she refused to give in to logic.

They looked entirely at home on these waters, like they had been raised on them since suckling babes, and perhaps they were. These were a people that knew the sea far better than Arya ever would. They didn’t just know it, they lived in it.

"Your _bangka_ …" He hesitated "Ship gone now. _Karok-Roh_ has now, has you ship and people."

"Who are the _Kara…?"_

 _"Karak-Roh_ is...big, scales, large teeth, swallows all."

She had seen a few monsters fitting that description in her time. Were they the same as the kind the Targaryens tamed? She did not see any darkening the sun in her travels, but then, she hadn't been seeing much those last few days before the wave smashed her world apart.

"...did you say...dragons, Wind-Sing, you have dragons here?  _Zaldrīzes_ , yes?"

"Many small dragon. No fire, no fly, swim. _Karak-Roh_ also swim, more bigger, hold...Eternity in his belly."

There were some truths lost in the translation, but she was certain now that _Seawolf_ and her crew were lost to the depths, water dragons or no.

"If my friends and ship were taken by dragons, why was I spared?"

"Speared?" Wind-Sing looked puzzled.

"Alive, I mean, why am I alive."

His weather beaten face cracked into a smile and he called out in the language she couldn't decipher. A young girl stood up. She was stripped to the waist, as most of them were. Her short choppy hair stuck out at all angles and reminded Arya of her time spent with Yoren as he tried to smuggle her out of King's Landing and back to what remained of her family. 'Arry had been scared then, this girl was the opposite. She raised her chin and stared back, the surface of the water shimmering against her eyes and making them dance.

"This one...name means Cry of the Gull...but not...his name." Wind-Sing said something that was probably the girls name, but Arya couldn't repeat it.

Wait...not a girl, Wind-Sing had said "his name." Something was different here, and she couldn't say why. Maybe it was just the strange eccentricities of Valyrian, but she didn't think so.

"He dives, save you from _Karak-Roh_ , bring you here, bring you to....I know not..this tongue. Bring you to us, the. Some us help, make heart live, make chest breath."

This was why every breath and motion filled her chest with daggers. She had seen this done often enough in Braavos, and heard the Ironborn did it for their Drowned God. The Many Faced God would demand penance for such an act, but then, the Many Faced God would demand all of her and more if the ledgers were balanced.

She turned to the girl. _Boy_ , he would be a boy here, among these people. "Many thanks, Cry of the Gull." He stared back blankly until Wind-Sing translated, then he was all smiles and eager nods.

Cry of the Gull asked Wind-Sing a question and he nodded.

"He has asked if you will stay, your people left you behind, entered...Eternity. Eyes, yours...Eyes of Water say you one of us.”

She touched her face in response. It was foolish. Eyes didn’t change, but she saw no mirrors among them to check for certain. It was the grey of her eyes, it had to be. Maybe there was some pact with Bran the Shipwright that made North blooded Starks allies. What had old Nan said? That he was sailing for the Blessed Isle and was never heard from again? She couldn’t be sure. It had been too long, and that life seemed distant now. 

That life, her known world, everything was gone now, and something different lay in its place. This was what she had wanted, wasn’t it? This was what lay west of Westeros, these people on their odd boats, extending a hand of friendship to her, a complete stranger they retrieved from death itself.

“I will stay.” Arya said.

Better a stranger than an echo.


	8. The Shallows

**Jerar Holdfast**

“Damselle!” Jerar tapped lightly on the warped wooden door. “Damselle Lana! Please come to the door. It is your sweet Jerar!”

Coalspirit lamps peeked out of the dark around him as her neighbors of the Shallows looked on from the shadows of makeshift _cabanes_ and the shattered empty hulls of ships. The ships were made from actual _trees_ , made by long dead hands that lived on the mainland, where the Empyre still had lumber forests.

Noble Families had come to Détente on ships like that, but most smashed themselves on the Fangs of Ira to the north of their island. The fragments washed ashore on the Scythe and the pieces were all hauled up by hand and thrown together _pêle-mêle_ for community shelter. 

The extra eyes made him nervous. Jerar was a Rafter, and Rafters were under Holdfast protection, but the Shallows kept their own law.

“Damselle!” He tried again, were the lights coming closer? “Damselle, I have a gift for you.”

The door creaked open the width of a few fingers. An eye peered out, dark and mysterious as the waters of the night canals. 

“A gift, did you say, Holdant?” A sliver of neat white teeth before the smile ghosted away. “And for me?” The door opened enough to admit a starveling alley cat and a pale, graceful hand emerged. Jerar placed a small cloth purse into it and heard the soft clink of a week’s worth of wages nestle into Damselle Lana’s delicate palm. His fingers lingered against the smooth skin and he met her gaze.

“For you, my love.”

The door peeled back and he could gaze upon the object of his heart’s desire, her luminous skin ruddy in the orange glow from the sky.

Wait...The sky?

Jerar heard screaming around him as Damselle Lana pulled her hand away and stepped back into the depths of her home. Jerar tried to make sense of his world. Something was happening, and he was on duty tonight. If anyone should be helping those in need, it was Rafters. He needed to find Fil. Fil would have the raft and then they would figure it out.

“Anon, my love!” Jerar shouted, and turned to pound his heavy feet against the ancient sand buried planks as he ran towards the shoreline.

 

* * *

 

 

**Minnows**

“Pole faster, Cha, we’re almost there.”

They’d better be ‘almost there’ now, instead of the six other times Maig had said so. Making it out to the Scythe had been tricky. The bottom of the shallow bay was lined with sunken junk from the people of Détente and it shifted as he pressed against it. Charo had almost fallen into the water twice, and he was pretty sure a splinter had lodged into the palm of his left hand, but he kept going. Sancs and Spittoons, they’d better be there soon.

“Look, Cha, an egg!”

“A what?” He looked up in time to see a pale round shape floating on the moonlit waters just outside the edge of the Scythe. Did dragon eggs float? Charo watched the tiny egg come closer as he poled with the last of his reserves-

And hit the edge of the beach. The sharp corner of the raft stabbed into the sand and stuck fast. The back end lifted and threw them both onto the gritty, tide wet sand. One of the Flash-Sticks banged as it fell onto the wood and lit up everything around them in a dazzling halo of blue. Charo squinted his eyes and reached for it, grappling half blind towards it until a small hand gripped his shoulder.

“Leave it, Cha, we gotta go.”

“But!” The hand tightened and Maig tugged at his shirt so hard he almost sprawled back down to the sand. Charo managed to get his feet under him when they started to run, digging his toes into the grit as he willed himself to keep pace through the exhaustion.

Shouted voices as they leapt over laid out ‘makia fiends mixed with the murmur of a larger crowd from somewhere in the Shallows. The group was lead by a coalspirit lamp bright enough that it could only come from one place, the Holdfast.

“Maig, the Rafters!”

“I see them, just keep going, the Flash-Stick’s brighter than we are, we just have to get to the-”

They skidded to a stop, kicked up sand pattering around them in little puffs of sound until they fell silent, the everpresent tide the only noise around them. A woman walked out from the sea, naked and luminous in the rare coastal moonlight. Where was the fog? Charo swallowed, hard. 

“I don’t think that’s an egg, Maig.”

“She’s not, but we’re still going to follow her. She flew in on a _dragon_ , Cha, she’s special.”

 

* * *

 

 

**Maig**

The Rafters took the mysterious woman to their namesake. Any idiot could have found it, since it was the only blue glowing raft in all the Scythe. Then they poled her to the place Rafters always returned to, the Holdfast. 

“How much further?” Cha asked. “My feet hurt.”

After scampering in a full speed crouch across half the bridges surrounding the Broken Heart Lagoon to keep up, hers did too, but she wasn’t one to go and _say_ it.

“They’re gonna go to the Holdfast, Cha, we have to see where they’re keeping her.”

“And then what, steal her?”

“Maybe.” She had been considering just that.

“Maig, you can’t just steal a person, they’re...well, they’re _people.”_

“Works for the Dams of Nox Insomnis.” She shot back. Maig knew it was different than just lifting a person like a loaf of bread, but at least it shut Cha up for a minute. 

They were quiet as they snuck through the old money district of Chevalier. They looked like scruffy Minnows and Maig was no con yet, though someday she might be as good as Maman.

When she thought they were going to drop right there on the ground from exhaustion, the Rafters turned off the main canal and drifted into an underground flowing offshoot as they disappeared beneath the Holdfast, bypassing the Gate House.

“We goin’ in?” Cha asked.

“Yes, somehow.” She heard the sigh of doubt. “She might be _magic,_ Cha, you really want the Holdfast to have magic that we don’t.”

“No. We get enough of that from the Nobles, I want some magic of our own.”

“That’s just what I was thinking.” Maig said, and scanned the thick stone walls for a way in.


	9. Keen-Eye

**Keen-Eye Holdfast**

Gate Duty was...exhausting. Keen-Eye would rather be doing any other job. Any of them, even scrubbing out the tile in the Baths with a brush the size of her palm would be preferable, at least then she would have something to do, well, something other than staring at nothing, which she had plenty of tonight. The Dock Guard, Holdant Bruno, cleared his throat and her head jerked up at the sound of blades jingling at his side in mismatched, ill fitting scabbards. Would a sword or cudgel make it easier? Arms were more exciting, so guard duty _with_ arms should be better, right?

“Not much longer now.” Bruno said, placing a Chrono-Disc back into the breast pocket of his uniform, the undyed cloth mingled with the limestone walls of the Holdfast and he faded back out of her awareness.

Keen-Eye went back to her job, using her namesake to scan the particolored yet nondescript walls, they were tan, beige, grey, and supér grey. Then to the Dock, where water from the canals rushed past the thick metal grate of the canal entryway and lapped lightly against the carved stone pier that butted out into the floor she and Holdant Bruno were standing on. The oil torches flickered and made the shadows dance around them. The Dock itself was dug out from a few body lengths of solid limestone, and the coalspirit pipes that made the rest of the Holdfast run couldn’t reach down here without the longest boring bit the Engineering Guild had ever dreamt of. Keen-Eye didn’t mind though, coalspirit was a little too bright and made her squinty and night blind. Oil smoked, and sometimes stank if it was from fish livers, but it gave her something to look at when she got bored. More bored than she was right now, anyway. Just her and the guard, watching the entry grate dance in the oil light. 

A hand clapped her shoulder and she almost jumped out of her skin from the fright of it. 

“Sanc’s left dagger, Mouse!” She swatted the hand away as Bruno's chuckles echoed in the stone room. “You trying to kill me?”

“Hardly.” Mouse-Foot gave her a droll look, his silver-black eyes shimmered against the water and oil flame the same as her own probably did. “If I managed, who would spend all day trying to best me in the practice yard? I’d have so much time on my hands I would need to take up spinning and weaving.”

“Very amusing, Cousin.” Keen-Eye used the formal Wai-Tau greeting to irk him before allowing him a round of applause as she clapped all of twice. “Are you here to relieve me, then?”

“I am.” He winked. “And I am definitely not supposed to tell you that the new batch of Harvest sweet rolls and a newly tapped barrel of morning ale are set out in the Kitchens for breakfast in a few hours.” Mouse-Foot picked a crumb from the thick weave of his uniform and placed it on his tongue, eyes rolling back in ecstasy as he closed his mouth over it.

“You’re on Gate Duty now,” Keen-Eye said, and spun about to swap places with Mouse so she could dash up and out the ramp into the Holdfast proper.

“Hey!” Bruno shouted, “Where’s my relief?”

“Oh, right.” Mouse-Foot looked chagrined. “Holdant Caro got caught up talking about some of the new policy changes with Elder Medi, she should be right behind me though.”

“Elder Medi’s up already?” Both Bruno's dark eyebrows shot up and vanished under the limp brim of his guard cap.

“Elder Medi knows a good thing when she sees it.” 

Keen-Eye saw Mouse’s quicksilver grin flicker across his face for a moment. 

“How do you think _I_ found out about the Kitchens?”

* * *

 

The soles of Keen-Eye’s leather boots scuffed across the polished stone floor as she dashed toward the Kitchens. If her watch went so late that it became early, the least the Holdfast could do was offer her breakfast so she could sleep in a little before resuming normal daytime activities. She skidded a turn through the doorway and smiled as her eyes came to rest on the shining glaze of trays full of Harvest sweet rolls. A quarter of one tray was missing, presumed to be in the bellies of other early risers or night herons, but there was more than enough for Keen-Eye to snatch a few and still leave the breakfasters a treat.

Mouse-Foot was an incorrigible pain in the ass when he wanted to be, but he certainly greased the way with favors to make up for it. 

Keen-Eye snagged a roll and headed towards the ale barrel. She took a bite before reaching for a tankard and stilled as her teeth sank into the yeast dough.

Ground almonds, cinnamon and vanilla honey crashed and battled against her tongue, and Keen-Eye was a well vanquished opponent. That honey was well worth the efforts she and dozens of other students and Holdants had made. Pollinating each and every vanilla orchid by hand on a single blooming day with ink brushes or smoking colonies to pull and scrape honeycomb drawers in sweltering bee suits at the Arena hives made the treat even sweeter. She forgot the tankard for a moment and got down to the business of eating as the world kept on for a moment without her. She would really have to do something special for the regular Kitchen staff sometime.

Her delicious opponent consumed, Keen-Eye began to lick sweet nectar from her fingertips one at a time.

She'd made it to her third digit when terse voices echoed down the hallway.

"There was fire in the sky, and then this woman just walked out of Scythe Bay and fell down in front of me."

"You're telling me a beautiful stark naked woman of unknown origins just strolled out of the sea and fell at your feet, Jerar? You really _are_ attending too many of those farces being sold as theater." It was the voice of Elder Medi, ever the skeptic. If there was a more ruthless Logic Instructor, the Holdfast hadn't found them yet.

"S'true, Elder. I was with'm."

That would be Fil, eternally lazy, even with his enunciating. It seemed the Rafters had returned from their rounds as soon as Mouse took over. Keen-Eye grinned to herself as the voices hurried along the corridor past the Kitchens without a moment's glance her way. She waited for the steps and the voices to fade before sneaking up to the door and risking a peek out into the hallway. 

It was empty now, and she bet her fencing dagger they were headed for the Infirmary. The grin widened. Mouse was going to miss out on the new stranger in their midst, and he was going to be livid when she told him all the details herself. Placing her steps in line, one in front of the other, she was careful not to scuff the stone as she balanced her weight and started to lope after them. Keen-Eye paused at every turn, peering the sliver of an eye out to check for clear passage each time before continuing on.

Yes, she would gloat over Mouse and make him beg for details, but first, she had to discover them.

Just one more corner and-

"Keen-Eye Matchio Holdfast," it was Elder Medi's classroom voice, and it made her wince, "if you're skulking in the halls at all hours nosing about, you might as well be useful."

So Keen-Eye strode forward into the open and stooped as she approached, placing a shoulder under the unconscious woman's arm opposite Jerar. Sanc, she weighed nothing at all. She shuffled forward and helped drag-walk the stranger the room Elder Medi was standing in. So, they weren't taking the stranger to the Infirmary after all, very odd. 

She smothered a grin when Elder Medi dismissed Jerar. “Please go to young Keen-Eye’s room and fetch her blades, Holdant.”

Keen-Eye took all the woman’s weight, which still wasn’t much, as Jerar left for her room. Elder Medi turned and pulled a worn sleeping gown out of the clothes chest. Jerar's oversized Rafting Coat had been trying to escape throughout the whole journey, and Keen-Eye let it as Elder Medi adjusted and bunched the long garment around the woman's slack body.

“Bring her over to the bed, please."

Keen-Eye complied, then stooped to pick up the puddled orange-gold cloth of the Rafting Coat.

Elder Medi sat down on the bedside and tucked the quilt stitched blanket up to the stranger’s chin, the same as she would for any Holdfast child woken with nightmares. 

“Elder?” Jerar’s voice at the door.

The Elder looked up from the strange woman. “Ah, thank you, Holdant. Keen-Eye, would you care to trade with Jerar, please?”

“Yes, Elder.”

Bundled cloth changed to the familiar weight of her sword and dagger and Keen-Eye buckled the leather around her. 

“Thank you, Holdant, can you please wake the other Elders and assemble them for a Council?”

“At once, Elder.” He bowed and strode off towards the Elder dormitories.

Elder Medi turned to her. “We don’t know anything about her, she could be imbued, or a spy, or any number of things, but she is foremost our guest and we will treat her that way. Please, stay here while I call a Council, do not let in anyone but me.”

“Yes, Elder.” Keen-Eye pulled a chair out from a stone topped writing desk and sat down upon it, folding her arms in her lap like the model Holdant she wasn’t. When Elder Medi turned and Keen-Eye heard her footsteps echo and fade in the hallway, she broke composure and slouched, sighing in relief at the oblique completion of her original mission.

There was no better place for snooping than an assignment guarding the bedside of the source herself.


	10. Dany

Daenerys woke to warmth and softness. She was dressed in a long gown and lying in a bed. It had been a long time since she had been in one, and she had forgotten how comforting they could be. Hundreds, or perhaps even thousands of miles away from anything she knew, she snuggled down into the linens. Dany could do with a little comfort before she faced...wherever she was now.

“Ah, you’re awake then.” Came a stranger’s voice in accented Valyrian, it wasn’t as rough as the bearded man’s had been, but it was still odd, faster and less melodic than what was spoken in Essos.

No, she wasn’t going to think of home.

“I am.” Dany admitted. “Is there anyplace I need to be just now?”

Dark brows knitted together over the most curious eyes she had ever seen, silver yet...not, before the stranger understood her dialect and chuckled. It was so nice, just this once, not to be met with fear and loathing at a first meeting.

“The beds are quite soft here, aren’t they? But no, there’s no place to be just yet, Elder Medi called a Council since your arrival and they’re trying to decide what to make you…”

She sat up, anger rushing to her side like an old friend. “‘Make me’? Well they can try-”

“No, no, I’m so sorry, the language…” The dark haired stranger straightened up and took a breath. 

That's when Dany noticed the blades hanging at her waist. Her new benefactors kept her under armed guard. Something started to harden within her. She was stupid to think that she could run from this, that she could go far enough away that fear would not precede her like a feast herald.

“They don’t know what to make _of_ you, what with the falling from fiery dragons story that has been said around town, when you're probably just an airship crewmember from the far north.”

Wait...airships? These people could _fly?_ Maybe she _should_ stay, perhaps she could even get ahold of one of those ships and-

_And fly where, home? You’ve never had one of those._ A bitter voice spoke within her. _Home is for those who are loved._

_If I look back, I am lost._

“It’s all so...fuzzy.” She lied. “I’m not sure how much I can remember…”

“No, no, it’s fine, please don’t strain yourself.” Her captor stood and walked over to a tray set on a nearby chest of drawers and picked it up. “Here, please eat, you must be famished.” She set the tray down and then slapped a palm against her forehead. “Ah, Sanc’s dagger, my manners, I’m Keen-Eye, by the way, Keen-Eye Holdfast, and the Holdfast is where we are housed right now.”

She put out a hand and Dany noticed a quick slip of those silver eyes to a handspan below her neck. Different, yes, but it was a look she had seen time and time again from her male allies and generals. She clasped the proffered arm and lingered just a little too long across the corded muscles of Keen-Eye’s wrist, pleased when her throat bobbed in a swallow. 

_Not so different after all._

"You are descended from the Lord and Lady of this House?" Dany asked with all the coy eye contact and lashes she could muster. When Keen-Eye broke away Dany set upon the food like the starving woman she was. Poison was too much effort, they could have just left her out there to die instead.

Keen-Eye stamped the floor like an irritated horse and cleared her throat. It seemed her charms were not bound to a head of silver-white Targaryen hair after all. Dany tried not to smile, the chewing helped, and the food...the food was suitable for any formal feast, and here it was sitting in a captive’s lap.

“I am a child _of_ the Holdfast, yes, but we are led by a Council of Elders, one of which brought you to this room earlier.”

Dany set aside the fourth bacon rasher she had been consuming, they were long past cold, but still delightful. How long had it been since she’d had bacon?

“There are no Noble Houses here, then? No families that inherit estates.”

“Not houses, but Families, yes, we have those, they are to the North and East of us. The Holdfast does few dealings with them, but they are there.”

So she was a captive of the rogue enemy of the nobles, interesting.

More interesting was watching Keen-Eye fidget and try to look anywhere but directly at her. She rested a hand upon the pommel of her sword, similar to the kind bravos carried, and settled.

A flash of memory hit Dany as she remembered another in her service committing such a move. The Stark girl had done it with her dagger, time and time again when they were in meetings. She would never speak, no, she had let her sister, Lady Sansa do all the talking, but Arya…

What had so unsettled Arya Stark? She was an assassin with a heart no warmer than a Northern Winter, if the stories were true. She had ended the Frey line, slain the Night King, and yet those hardened nerves that may have been cast from Valyrian steel frayed in Daenerys' presence.

“Are you imbued?” Keen-Eye blurted.

“Imbued?”

“Elder Medi wanted to know, I suppose you could always lie, but you’ve cooperated so far…”

“I don’t believe so, no, I’m not even certain I know what that is, much less if I am, what was it again, ‘imbued?’”

“Those who are blessed by a great enough Shard of Embrien become imbued, like the scions of the Noble Families.”

“Which means…?”

“Oh..right, you don’t know.” Keen-Eye took a considerable breath. “So, there was a war, and Embrien had this scepter that imbued her with all these powers, and it shattered and blew apart the land into our islands and the Noble Families came from the mainland like you did and bought shards of the broken scepter from Wai-Tau Divers.” Another breath. “Then they get blessings from the collected fragments for certain powers that belong to their families but they’re forbidden to use them against us, not that we could tell if they were...except LeFeuvre keeps them in check by threatening to burn their manses every now and again.” 

She understood LeFeuvre's sentiment, whoever they were. “No,” Dany said. “I only understood little more than half of that, but I can tell you I haven’t come across any fragments of...Embrien, was it?”

Keen-Eye nodded, mute now that she had gushed out her story. Dany went back to eating and ignored the awkward silence growing between them as she tried to figure out what strange magic lived in this city with her.

At least there was bacon.


	11. The Great Dany Escape I

**Maig**

 

The way up had been steepbacked as a Sanc, what with the stick they always kept jammed up their asses, but they had made it. Maig and Charo were Minnows, and Minnows could break into _anything_. From above, the Holdfast looked like a fat man who had just won at dice and was sliding his reward across the table, except his arms were buildings and the table was a training Arena. They were standing somewhere on his belly, or maybe it was a sagging nipple. Behind them, hollowed out of the fat man's chest, were deep tunnels carved straight into the mountainside. Maig was pretty sure this was the place where the founders stored their bodies. Corpses wouldn’t still be wet and rotting after lying around for a hundred years, would they?

“Cha, where do they keep the healing place?”

“The Left Arm,” Cha said, “I pass it all the time on the way to Reading class.”

Maig peeked out and below them, to the left of the flat training grounds, several windows shone with the whitish light of coalspirit lamps.

“It’s gotta be there, right?” Maig pointed to the light and saw Cha scratch his head in confusion.

“I think so?”

“You _think?_ Cha, I thought you were here every other day.”

“I am,” he insisted, “but we don’t come in from the back way, Maig, we come in the front way like decent folk.”

“‘Decent folk’ don’t scrape and simper to the Holdfast and their holier than thou Sanc laws for the right to access something that _should_ be free to everyone, even atheists and ‘makia users.”

“Fine. No one’s _making_ you take classes, Maig, you do just great all by yourself. The rest of us idiots don’t want to stay illiterate market trash for the rest of our lives like a Fish-Man.”

“They are the Wai-Tau, Charo, and they don’t _need_ to write in Détente cuz they have their _own_ language, so stop talking about them like you know any of them because you don’t, you really, _really_ don’t.” 

Charo shut up and started walking down the slope and towards the gleaming windows in pointed silence. Maig bit her lip and chewed 'til she drew blood, thinking.

Maman said she needed to win every fight so she'd be better than everyone and people would respect her. Maig always listened to Maman, even when it came to Cha.

She'd won, so why did she feel so bad inside?

 

* * *

 

_"We know nothing, nothing at all about this woman and she’s just running free about the Holdfast? That’s careless, even for you, Medi.”_

_“I would hardly call lying unconscious in a guarded bed ‘running free,’ Varin, but we seem to have a difference of opinion when it comes to language, since I was under the impression that all strangers arrive at the Holdfast with nothing held over them, the same as the babes that get left at the gate.”_

_“Those are infants, Medi, they cannot harm us with unknown magic, or plot our demise through warfare and poison us from within.”_

“What are they saying?” Cha whispered. “Something about babies?”

They had snuck into the hall without a single picked lock and followed the lights. It seemed the Holdfast were a trusting folk beyond the thick barrier walls and the guards in the gate house. She was curled up on the floor with her ear to the generous crack beneath the door, but the voices inside were so loud that Cha hadn’t even bothered and was just listening through an ear pressed to the woven latticework of the door.

“Medi wants the stranger seen as innocent as the Holdfast orphans and Varin wants her arrested as a spy.” Cha leaned in to hear her quiet words, at least he didn’t hold a grudge for long.

“Why didn’t they just say that, then?”

“Cuz they’re educated and they like big words.” She put a finger to her lips to shush him.

“ _Why wasn’t I notified immediately? She could have medical issues that aren’t visible, Solène’s scalpel, she could be bleeding internally and no one would know it.”_

_“I’ve notified you now, but I thought the rest of the Council would want this information as well. Would you like to see her now, Varin? She’s in the Right Arm, in Cedric’s old room.”_

Maig heard a laugh that made her shudder. 

_"Put the spy in the whore’s room, excellent choice, Medi, I applaud your flair for the dramatic.”_

_“It was the first open room I saw, Varin.”_

_“Elders, if you excuse me, I’ll collect my tools and check in on this stranger in our midst.”_

_“Her guard won’t let you, Varin, she’s under orders from me.”_

_“Oh she will if I threaten her with expulsion, Medi, she’s got one foot out the door already, a little push and-”_

She sat up and tapped Cha’s shoulder. “We gotta go, someone’s coming out soon.”

He nodded. “Right Arm?”

“Right Arm.” She agreed.

They dashed off towards the courtyard as the sky started to lighten, how long had it taken to climb that hill and come down? They skulked through shadows and planters as they made their way around the Arena and towards the other side, breaking cover when the had to in a mad dash across the open. They almost crashed into a fruit tree in the frantic dive for darkness on the opposite end.

Cha tugged another latticed door open with as little noise as he could manage, which was still louder than she wanted, before they were dashing down the hall and looking for a room that might work.

Cha’s heavy breathing followed close behind her. She hoped he would make it to wherever they needed to hide the magic woman when they succeeded.

They _were_ succeeding, she was sure of it, they just had to find-

A low burning candle flickered in a room with an armed Holdant talking to someone. Someone with an accent Maig had never heard before, and Maig had listened in on every small corner Détente had to offer.

“This one!” She hissed back to Cha, her voice sounded ragged. How long _had_ they been running tonight? “Run the...the Lost Boy.”

“Here? But Maig, they _know_ -”

“Just run it! Maybe this one doesn’t know you!”

Cha started sobbing, and it was so convincing that Maig was only half certain he was performing, it really had been a long night.

She pressed herself against the wall opposite the door as the Holdant came out to comfort Cha, as responsible members of society often did.

“Boy, what’s wrong, what’s your-”

“I lost Maman!” He howled, and threw all his considerable weight into a wet and snotty hug, entangling the Holdant.

Maig slithered into the room. Cha had his setbacks, but when you _really_ needed him, he always came through.

“Woman of Magic,” Maig said, “I am Maig of the Shallows, and I have come to take you from this place and free you from the Holdfast. What is your name?”

“Free me?” Confused eyes the color of the purpling dawn blinked at her as she pushed away a tray of fodder Maig would have cut a half dozen purses for. “My name...my name is Daener-” She shook her head, like a mongrel dog plagued with sand flies. “Dany, my name is Dany.”

Maig held out an outstretched hand and hoped it wasn’t too filthy. “Will you come with me from this place, Dany who falls from the backs of sky dragons?”

“You saw me?”

“I did, and you have a magic this place has not yet seen. Once they stop the airship farce, they will fight for it, with sword and dagger and even other magic if the imbued Nobles find you. I saw the blades on that Holdant, you are not even free in this bed.”

Cha wailed outside in the corridor.

“And how am I to know if you are not luring me into a prison of your own making.”

Damn, she was clever, even with the strange accent making her slow and uncertain.

Maig shrugged. “You don’t, but I’ve only a little knife on me,” she tugged out her hooked cutpurse blade, “and it is yours if you desire it.”

Dany looked askance at her only weapon. “No, that’s...that’s alright, I believe you.” She got out of bed and took a moment to look down at herself. “At least I’m dressed now. How do we…?” Dany waved an upturned hand at the door.

“Escape?” Maig asked. “An excellent question, Dany of the Sky-Dragons.”

Cha was dragging the Holdant across the hallway and trying to lead them in the opposite direction of the canal dock. She would take luck where she found it.

“We’ll try the dock,” Maig said, “the same way you came in.” 

The woman took Maig’s hand. It was warm, very warm, and she gripped it like it was the greatest coin she’d ever filched.

Perhaps it was.


	12. Ar-Yah Star of the Cold Water Mongrels

**Arya**

Arya’s fingers scrabbled at the whitish patches on her arm. She sighed in relief as the itching top layer peeled off under her fingernails and left new skin beneath, a little darker with each reveal cycle. The hardest part about her new life was the sunburn. The first week had been so bad she was half certain the wave had killed her and this was one of the Seven Hells. There was little shelter on the open water, and her new hosts simply draped woven cloth over them and laid down to sleep on the rounded deck of...bamboo, they had said it was bamboo. Everything seemed to be made out of the stuff unless metal was needed, usually for an edge or a cookpot. The only actual wood she saw, when she saw any of it, were small, well loved items with a reddish hue in the grain.

The cook fires were lit on dried seaweed or bamboo charcoal and held above deck on an elevated brazier, and the food inside was even stranger. Tiny fish, squid, cockles and most anything at all that could be pulled from the sea went into the pots or were fire kissed upon a metal grate and then eaten straight away, sometimes in a bowl, sometimes on a large leaf, sometimes a handful at a time when poured onto a communal platter of rice. Strange, yes, but filling in a way she hadn’t known in far too long. Cat of the Canals had eaten well, but no one since. There were spices, too, salt sweet or sour heat, they always married, no one flavor left to stand on its own. The peppers...those took some getting used to, and more often than not she found herself trying to tame it by reaching for an extra handful of rice or some shredded meat from the fist sized nuts that shone whiter than weirwood inside.

"Has the sun burned the foreigner out of you yet?"

"No, Cousin," Arya couldn't hold back the grin at her mentor's antics, "not just yet."

"Tch," Less-Than swatted at the arm Arya had been scrubbing at, "we must tell Sky to try harder then, and bring this lost new-brown child home to Sea."

Her Valyrian was crisp and staccato, better than any of the other Fishers in this flotilla of crafts, which had Wind-Speak as a sort of house name.

“I was more at home on the water than most when you found me.” Arya scrubbed harder at a stubborn patch.

Less-Than giggled. “Trying to swallow Sea like a very small water-dragon does not seem very ‘at home’ to me, Ar-Yah.”

Arya stopped scratching. “Your dragons breath water like fish?” That...that was quite different.

“No, no,” she tried to school her face into seriousness and failed, “but you’re a stranger, so you’ve never heard the story.”

“Not that one, but I’ve stories from my people, care to trade?”

“Only if you start the barter.” Less-Than countered. She was true to her name, and even dickered when only words were at stake.

“I expected nothing less, Cousin Less-Than.” But which story to tell her, something fantastic about the fire dragons, of Nymeria the warrior queen and the fleet of ships she burnt? Would that mean anything at all to her?

“We had an ancestor, named for my brother, Brandon, that built many wooden ships-” 

“Many whats?”

Right, no trees here, and her vessel had been almost revered when Wind-Speak saw it, which is why she had been saved, so that she might teach them how to build such a thing. She was worried about that unspoken promise, as she knew only a little about ship building, and there was still the lumber problem.

“Canoes.” Arya said. “Canoes made from…” She made whittling motions and hugged a small, invisible object to her chest.

“Mahogany?”

“Yes! Made from mahogany, larger than even the one I sailed on.” She must have underestimated the value of the red wood, because Less-Than’s eyes grew large and she stilled even more than her usual quiet patience.

“Brandon the Canoe-Maker sailed far on the same path I took to come here, but he was never heard from again. We have a land that stretches as far as the sun rises, and many thought he sailed around the world and found landfall with those people, but none had heard his name, so he was lost to the sea. His son, also a Brandon-”

“Do your people only have one name besides yours?” Less-Than asked.

“When a...child is born,” no use adding gender differences onto cultural ones, “they are named for their parents, so that others may know who raised them.”

Less-Than snorted. “The Clan raises them, and they take the Clan's name, is it not so with you?”

“It is,” Arya admitted, but how to explain that particular bit of naming, “are there not names in Wind-Speak that are used more than once?”

“Some names, like Wind-Sing, or Dark-Dive, but those are handed down when the old one goes back to _Karak-Roh_ , and not before.”

“We have titles that do that, special names that make children into leaders once their parents die, like Lord and Lady or Prince and King.”

“And the people follow, simply because they are named leader?”

Less-Than had a valid point, and Arya wished more of Westeros was as sharp thinking as her mentor. “They do, but not all of the leaders are good ones. Do you not follow the child of Wind-Sing once she goes back to...to…”

“The one who is mentored to Wind-Sing with surpass her, and none other, and she will return to _Karak-Roh_ , the Dragon-God, whose story I will tell you, after you are finished trying to mold sand into metal for trade.”

Damn. “You’re right, that was a terrible story for barter. Will you tell me of..K... _Ka-rak-Roh_ anyway? Not as a trader, but as a mentor?”

“A clever diversion,” Less-Than smiled and Arya felt a little twinge of pride, “ we shall make a proper Fisher of you yet, Ar-Yah Star of the Cold Water Mongrels.”

They didn’t have family names, or words for snow, or ice, or even wolf, those had been lost or never existed in their native tongue to begin with, so they didn’t carry over from Valyrian language lessons since there was no concept to map them onto. Valyrian and the city that taught it seemed to be called _Day-Taunt_ when she asked about it, which seemed very odd indeed.

“Tell me the story, Cousin, that I may know more than I did when I woke today.”

“And more tomorrow, and every day after.” Less-Than agreed. 

She was quite serious about her duty to the adopted stranger, and Arya was glad for it. 

“In the beginning, there was only Sea and Sky, Sky brought light and Sea brought life. They were the only two _puqun_ in all the world." 

" _Puqun_?" Arya parroted. This was a word she had never heard before, and Arya had almost grasped parts of their language in the long days she had stayed among them and listened. She had asked Less-Than about every word she failed to decipher and this was the strangest yet.

" _Puqun_ are…" Less-Than thought for a moment. "They are the thing that comes before, the thing that makes something what it is, the part that joins before to now."

Arya was now more confused and she could see it reflected in the tension of Less-Than's face. "Like a mentor?" She was grasping at almost nothing and she knew it.

"No...it's...Mahogany is not always tall, and it is not always the little pieces in our hands or the long planks we sell to _Day-Taunt_. When it is young, it is a seed."

" _Puqun_ are seeds?"

Less-Than tsked, "You are acting as a Diver now, leaping and not knowing." She tried again. " _Puqun_ are sources of...that which makes a thing what it most wants to be. Mahogany wants to be tall, to be strong, so the roots dive into the earth and pull back strength to help it grow, the roots are _puqun_ because they take the strength from the earth and make it into mahogany, but the mahogany was once a seed. The earth and the _puqun_ of the roots makes it what it is, the roots are a link between earth and mahogany."

Arya suddenly understood why this word was untranslated.

"Sea and Sky exist between here and…the world that is not ours, the world where things are greater than us, but that we cannot touch without _puqun_ to bridge across."

Gods…she was talking about a realm of gods and unfathomable power. Arya had seen that power, fire and ice, life and death, had it followed her all this way? No, this was different, it had to be, Less-Than had mentioned life and light, not R’hllor and the Other. She would not give in to speculation.

_Fear cuts deeper than swords._

Less-Than had taken her silence for understanding and continued on, her hands had started to move with the story, it was not quite dancing, but more than a gesture. Soon Arya forgot her fear, it was easy to focus on the images cast by her mentor’s clear voice, pleasant even.

"The little animals born from Sea lived on their skin and nested in their hair, fish and whales for Sea, and birds and insects for Sky. The animals gave companionship, but after a time Sea and Sky began to long for more. They began to court, singing and daring one another to greater feats of closeness until one day they kissed.

When they kissed, Sky rushed fire up from the depths of Sea’s belly, bursting lava cooling against the water as it made the first islands. The kiss was the best thing they had known, so they tried it, again and again, until the world was dotted with the islands of tiny pecks or the sprawling lands of lips that lingered.

One day, a rumble came from the earth their kisses had wrought, it shook and shook until the land cracked open, and in the crack was endless Darkness they had never encountered. This was new, since Sky brought light, and the only dark in the world were the passing shadows. Sea went to explore as Sky looked on, curious. Sea climbed to the very edge of the crack. 

Something large and clawed reached out from the mouth of Darkness and drug Sea down into the depths. The screams could be heard by every creature of the world. All the waters of the ocean slipped down into the crack, rushing and draining until Sea vanished. Sky raged, but could not follow, typhoon winds blew, lightning cracked and many of the water creatures died without Sea who nurtured them.”

Arya had been a child the last time a story had come upon her like this. It was sudden and consuming, and the greater facets of life faded out against the entangling snare of Less-Than’s words. Something had happened since then, this was some kind of origin story and there was Sea right below them, but knowing how a people treated their gods, whether real or imagined, was sometimes more important than the story itself.

"Then, from the darkness crawled the largest scaled beast ever seen, it had teeth longer than palm fronds and arms and legs that scratched against the earth to move a body larger than a whale. Behind this creature poured out hundreds and thousands of tiny lizards and mice, so many that it looked like the tide was rushing back with water made of fur and scales. The mice and lizards were scared of the beast that fed upon them in the Darkness, so they ran away in fear.

'Who are you?’ Sky demanded, ‘What have you done with Sea?’

'I am _Karak-Roh,’_ it hissed, ‘I am of Darkness and the Unknown, and this land was mine before you trespassed.’

‘There was no “before,” false trickster, now return to me that which was stolen.’

‘I see only my domain spread out before me, surveyed over by a useless bag of wind.' _Karak-Roh_ said. 'I will stay here and continue to rule over the mice and lizards as all others perish.’

Sky ran then, helpless, and _Karak-Roh_ waddled about to find himself a proper throne to rule from. It took a very long time, _Karak-Roh’s_ belly was large and bloated, and the scrabbling legs could only move so fast under all the weight, for in the Dragon-God’s belly was Sea, swallowed whole and left to die with all the mice and lizards that _Karak-Roh_ had feasted upon. Sea would not wallow, would not give in to grief. Sea was clever, and those with cleverness always have another secret waiting.

In the belly of _Karak-Roh,_  Sea spoke to the mice and lizards that remained.

'Help me, and you will be free from _Karak-Roh,_ you will live on my waters and never want for anything.'

'How do we help?' Chorused the mice and the lizards.

'Tickle _Karak-Roh’s_ throat, squirm inside each nostril and bite the soft cheek skin, when _Karak-Roh_ can stand it no longer we will escape from the very mouth that swallowed us.'

So the lizards and mice did just that, stuffing scaled and furry bodies into _Karak-Roh's_ nose and scratching cheeks and throat with claws and teeth. _Karak-Roh_ yelled in surprise and the great maw opened. Out poured all the lizards, running and scattering for any cover they could find. Then the mice pushed Sea out before them, clinging and pulling with their little teeth. 

They were almost out when _Karak-Roh's_ mouth snapped shut, trapping a handful of mice and Sea’s hair between teeth clenched so tight that not even water could flow out.

'Yeer ‘ine Ssssseeea.' _Karak-Roh_ growled.

'I will not stay, not ever!' Sea cried. 'Help me! Help me, my friends.'

The freed mice were already chewing, cleaving the thick dark strands of Sea’s hair, gifting escape from _Karak-Roh_ one small bite at a time. _Karak-Roh_ 's head shook but it was too late, the straining locks parted and Sea flew free as the hair turned to water in _Karak-Roh’s_ belly.

'You have lost!' Sea exclaimed.

'My love!' Sky cried, 'You are freed!'

'I am,' Sea said, 'Sky, my love, send all the earth’s sand to the crack this monster crawled from, that I may never be parted from you again.'

The winds roared, blasting sand across the desert one grain at a time. The grains stacked in all the low places, and into the Darkness that birthed _Karak-Roh_ , filling every crevice until even that crack was sealed. Only then did Sea return water to the world.

'To you, my friends,' Sea said to the mice. 'I keep my promise.' Sea transformed them into people and gave them bamboo that they might float upon the water. 

The first people only knew to be mice, and the first canoes were cut with teeth and lashed with hair.

Then Sea pointed to the lizards, and they cowered deeper in their hiding. 'And to you, who betrayed me, do I curse.'

Sea turned them to water-dragons, short of leg but long of snout and tail, then bade them follow _Karak-Roh_ for all their days, for when you see the water-dragons, _Karak-Roh_ is not far away.

'I will always hunt you, Sea, you cannot stop me. Darkness was here before both of you, and I will remain long after you are less than a memory.'

Sea thought on this. 'No, I cannot stop you, but others can, and will.'

Then Sea made the mice still trapped inside _Karak-Roh_ into people, and they are the ancestors that keep Eternity. 

They received knives of shark’s teeth, to stab _Karak-Roh’s_ insides if ever Sea were captured.

This is the ancient charge of the _Wai-Tau_ , still kept today. We live and prosper upon Sea’s breast, and return to _Karak-Roh's_ belly for all time when our lives have sailed their course. It is our duty to always protect the mother that weaned us up from furred beasts, and we will not falter."

Less-Than stopped talking and her hands came to rest. The tale was over. Did one clap after a story such as this? Arya didn't know. She felt something stir deep inside, the maimed remnants of Honor, perhaps?

"That was...incredible."

Less-Than snorted. "That was not much of anything, there are usually gongs, and dancers, and costumes, and rhyme...but this language is not a good friend to our stories, they come out...different, and poor."

"Poor by your standards, Cousin, but I enjoyed it, and now I understand what it is to be a water-dragon," she placed thumb and forefinger almost together, "even a very small one."

That broke Less-Than out of her dark mood and received the bare hint of a smile.

"I now know more than when I woke." Arya reminded her. "And you had more audience than this ignorant stranger." Arya tossed back her head a bit to point with her chin and pouted lips. One did not point at people with their hands among the _Wai-Tau_.

Gull-Cry and a group of younger children looked on from the other side of the canoe platform. It was very clear that Arya was not the subject of Gull-Cry's intense fascination, though the children were staring wide eyed at Arya with no shame at all. She'd gotten used to the stares from members of Wind-Speak she didn't know very well, but Gull-Cry hadn't looked at her that way since he'd hauled her up from the ocean depths and she had woken up from near death.

Another noise of dismissal from Less-Than. "They understood little more than a handful of what was said."

"Do they know the story?"

" _Every_ child among us knows this story."

"Then they either know more of this language than you think, or your hands tell the story better than your voice." 

Arya had to dodge a swipe from those eloquent hands unless she wanted to have her ear cuffed.

"And I think you have a suitor among them." Arya braced for impact and shut her eyes, tucking in her elbows and cupping her hands over her ears.

No blow came, and Arya peeked one eye open. Less-Than was standing with a look of consternation across her face.

"I think you are right." She said.

"What?" It took three rounds of argument to get Less-Than to even _consider_ a new aspect of something.

A loud belly laugh started behind them. Arya and Less-Than both looked back. Gull-Cry was laughing so hard he was almost crying.

"Was that...was that because of the suitor comment?" Arya asked.

"No, Gull-Cry can't speak a word of Day-Taunt. He's laughing because dodging blows, and provoking them, is something Divers do, and he is convinced that you are one."

"A Diver?" That, that was something to consider. “And what do you think of that?”

“I think that is your decision to make, but that you will have to make it, eventually.”

A Diver, while Less-Than was teaching her the finer points of being a Fisher. 

In any other culture, Divers were men. 

Arya was being asked to choose a gender, and was shocked when she reached deep within, and couldn’t come up with an answer.


	13. The Great Dany Escape II

**Dany**

This small, underfed girl with dark hair and olive skin was leading her down the hallway and all Dany could think about was that she wanted to turn back the wheel of history. She wanted Missandei clutching her hand the same way she had after Dany had tricked the Astapori slave masters and gained everything for nothing.

In the end, that’s what it had wrought her, the gruesome and unnecessary death of her best friend and a knife in the gut from a lover that didn’t love her. She was nothing, and had nothing.

“This way.” The girl tugged at her hand. Maig, her name was Maig, wasn’t it?

Parts of this place weren’t so much built as carved from the ground itself, and this particular ground was solid stone. The sobbing boy in the hallway had distracted her guard, Keen-Eye, more than her feminine wiles ever could. Dany heard the tormented echoes fade as the ground slanted downward. The smell of water pricked at her senses, water, and just a hint of nose wrinkling sewage. They came to a line of large rounded pegs beaten into the wall with garish flat brimmed caps and bright orange coats hanging off them.

“Take one of these and put it on.” The girl said. “You’re going to need it.”

“We’ll be caught as soon as as we’re seen!” Dany hissed. “You think no one is going to notice this color?”

“I’m _betting_ on this color, magic woman, and if you don’t put this coat on my best friend’s sacrifice is all for nothing and I _will_ just leave you here.”

Dany shut up and took the smallest coat she could find from its peg and slipped it on. It draped past her knees and the cuffs almost covered her fingers, but it fit better than she had expected it to. Some of these uniforms must have belonged to women almost as small as Dany herself.

“Now what?” Was it still kidnapping if you were an adult being willfully stolen by a child?

“Now you go down there and face the two of them, there's always an unarmed gate keeper at the winch and an armed dock guard. Tell them there’s been a change in schedule and you are taking me, ‘this child,’ home to _The Shallows_ to be with her mother. If they question you, say that Elder…” she thought for a moment, “that Elder _Medi_ asked for the change and that she’s tied up in Council on account of the stranger. Repeat it back.” 

Dany glowered, she might have had nothing, but she wasn’t going to be ordered about by a-

“Please.” 

 _Fine._ Dany gritted her teeth together. “There has been a change in schedule and I am taking this child home to her mother in the Shallows.”

“But what of the rotation?” Maig whined, sounding somehow more obnoxious than Dany thought children could sound. Perhaps it was good she had only birthed dragons.

“You can take it up with Elder Meni if you wish,” Dany grated, “but you’ll have to do it later, she is in a Council meeting at the moment, due to the _stranger_ in our midst.”

“Medi.” Maig said.

“What?”

“Elder Medi, you said Meni.”

“I did?”

“Yes, but the rest was great. Clenching your teeth like that really helped with your accent.”

“ _My_ accent?”

The girl shrugged. “We all come from someplace, just don’t let them know you do. Ready?” 

Dany tugged at her sleeve and straightened a bit. It was the same sort of coat the bearded man had draped over her when she collapsed on shore.

"I don't suppose I'll ever be _more_ ready, so yes."

"Here." Maig reached up to grasp Dany's hand, and instead of leading, as before, she let the confidence drain out of her like a leaking wineskin. "You lead the way."

Dany looked at the scared child clutching the end of her arm, then raised an eyebrow in shock, blinking a few times to see if the image before her would change. It did not, and her rescuer, for all appearances, was now being rescued.

Well, if this child could give a convincing performance so could she.

"Come along, then." Dany ordered. She tried to remember a touch of the majesty she had once donned like a second skin as they strolled forward. Not too much, she was not an..what were they, Elders? Yes, Elders. She was only a...whatever the people that went out on rafts were.

“What am I again?” Dany whispered.

Maig broke from her sniffling to hiss back, “You’re a Rafter, you go out to collect refuse and sometimes help people, but everyone hates you for it.” She turned her face away and went back to her pretense of trying not to cry and whimper in fear.

Who _was_ this child? “I am Dany the Rafter and there’s been a change in schedule and Elder Medi is busy in a Council about the stranger.”

Dany repeated this as a litany as they walked the downward sloping path. When flickering torchlight came into view, _at least someone here is still using torches_ , she squared her shoulders and lifted her head. Being necessary and hated for it was her foremost pastime, she needed no mummery at all.

She could hear voices echo as they approached.

"-then I get pulled from bed and told to grab my knife and keep dock watch because Holdant Caro's been sent on a _special_ errand for the Elders and can't be bothered with _normal_ duties like twilight watch shifts and-"

"Shhh! Did you hear that?"

“Hear what now? I mean- _Halt_ who goes?” Did this gruff voice belong to the armed guard or the gate keeper?

“Only Dany the Rafter,” she called out into the echoing cavern. Maig started to wail and clung to her leg so fiercely Dany thought she would fall over. As Dany stumbled to regain her balance, she realized their error. Though the cap did much to conceal her baldness, Dany the Rafter was barefoot.

"Not Alain?" Came the query. "I thought they were the early Rafter."

Dany approached with the shuffling gait of a wight as Maig stayed firmly attached to her legs. The girl's filthy clothing and the bulging sack she kept strapped to her back did much to mask Dany's pale skin. Beyond the stone plateau the men were standing on was a carved stone dock, attached to it was a curious looking raft. It was tied up to a rusted metal post sunk into the rock and strained against the rope like a hound on the scent of a fox. The tide must have been going out. Standing in front of the raft was a guard. The guard held a weapon in his hand, and the glinting edge of it was pointed right at her. Dany was expecting a sword, like her bedside guard had carried, but this was a long, wicked looking knife the length and breadth of her forearm.

She would not stammer or cower. _Remember to clench._ "The change was made by Elder Medi, and I'm afraid you will have to wait for the Council meeting regarding the stranger to finish before bothering her with such a triviality." 

"Y'see!" The man gestured broadly at Dany with his blade hand and she felt panic stir. "Another _special_ errand to spit on Maxime's sancly ledger."

There was a sharp pain in her leg. Had Maig just elbowed her? "Now, if you will let me pass, I have a child to take home to her mother."

"If that's the girl I think she is," said a new voice, "then her dear Maman may very well have sent her here to spy on us."

This was not at all in the plan.

Dany spun about and came face to face with the second guard in the cavern with them. If they had any luck at all, he would be the unarmed gate keeper. He was no more than a handspan taller than she was, but held the easy, lithe grace of a bravo. Those eyes, though, they were the mirror image of her bedside guard. Were they related somehow, siblings?

Their eyes met and he looked at her with shock and wide eyed surprise, then his features hardened and his tone took on a barking edge.

“It seems our stranger is a traitor as well.”

How...how had he known it was her? She was certain she had never seen him before, and he didn’t know her name, how-

“Sky Eyes do little to hide a spying Northern foreigner on our shores.”

Her what? She allowed that violet was a curious color at best, and perhaps her ancestors really had done a terrible job at ruling these people. Now they, like Braavos, had forged their own freedom and seemed to be doing their very best to maintain it. 

“Fine.” Dany unclenched her teeth with the tiniest exhale of relief. “I am the stranger, but I mean you no harm. My name...is Daenerys Targaryen.”

She waited for the other guard to strike, for the blow that would cut her deep and leak her lifeblood there onto the slick rock beneath her feet. The world had taught her that it wanted the last Targaryen dead, and she was tired of fighting it.

“Mouse, does that name mean anything to you?” The guard with the excessive knife backed up just a bit and the tip of his blade drooped away from her neck.

“No." 

This “Mouse” looked disappointed, Dany couldn’t bring herself to give him one fleck of pity over it.

“But the records could be wrong, or she could be _lying._ ”

“And if I was some spy,” Dany interrupted. “If I had orders to come and live among you and learn your ways. I have no way of getting back to this place you think I come from, so what use would I have been to your sworn enemies?”

Mouse, the dark haired guard with mirror eyes would not be swayed. A strange echo filtered into the cavern, sounding like the tap, tap of water dripping someplace.

“You were one of many, then, and-"

“'Many'? Are you listening to yourself? Do you often have foreign strangers walk up out of the sea at night?” 

"-and it is our job to find the others whose arrival was not so…" his mouth turned up into a sneer, "fanciful.”

"'Fanciful?'" This woke the dragon as nothing had in a very, very long while. "I would not use that word to describe the loss of every, last, _scrap_ of the world I had known." Dany straightened to the full height of her meager inches to properly cow the unarmed man, who sought to slight her travails as if they were nothing more than an afternoon jaunt to the local market.

Her small companion had no such compulsion, and a slim length of rope or cord appeared in her hands. Where she had found it, Dany had no idea, but she dove for the ankles of the armed guard. She wrapped the cord and cinched his feet together before running and pulling with a smooth and practiced looking tug. The man and the knife toppled to the stone floor. At the same moment the tapping sound, that Dany thought had been water, resolved into the frantic steps of the sobbing boy Maig had accompanied. He was no longer crying and had a rather determined look on his doughy face.

"Cha!" Her attention was on the writhing man and keeping enough tension on the makeshift leash that he stayed on the floor and away from his knife. "Get the gate!"

Mouse, the gate guard with a grudge against Dany the Foreign Spy, didn't know whether to stop his Sky Eyed nemesis or stall the small child. His indecision cost him and Dany spotted his hand stray towards an invisible hilt, _was everyone here a thrice cursed bravo?_ just as the boy swung something small and metal against the ropes of a complicated gear and pulley system. The fat length of taut rope started to fray and untwist from a gash across the fibers.

"No Cha! The _crank_ , if you cut the ropes we're done for." 

Maig's attention was on the floor and keeping the dock guard exactly where he was with firm and judicious yanks. Which meant that it was up to Dany to…

Mouse, the gate keeper, turned and started towards the boy, who was straining against a geared crank almost as large as he was. As she flung her body after him, Dany wished, not for the first time in her life, that she knew anything at all about battle.

It could be much worse, at least they were similar in size. Dany opened her arms and threw all her weight into a body tackle that made the two of them skid on the damp floor and gave the boy at the crank a little more time.

"Thought you wanted the foreign spy, _Mouse_." Dany goaded, trying her best to keep his attention.

A swift knee in her gut told her that she had it, and that no one had ever properly explained to her how painful that particular move was. As Dany fell to the floor she saw the extravagant knife again and stretched her fingers out towards it. A kick to her ribs made her regret not curling up into a ball and being small and innocuous like she had when Viserys was in one of his rages, but this was not Viserys, and she was not that little girl.

The teeth of the gate gears strained as they clinked together and there was a splashing rush of water that must have been the gate lifting. She focused on that sound and not the hoarse rattle of her breathing or the pain that meant something must be cracked inside of her chest.

"You're not a quick learner, are you?" It was Mouse again, and the next blow would be coming, so Dany only had one chance left. She dug her bare toes into the stone, skin snagging and nails scrabbling against the slick surface as she propelled herself forward, slipping and sliding along until Dany felt her fingers grasp the worn hilt of the knife. She gripped it like the lifeline it was.

Dany pushed up with her free hand, trying not to scream at the ripping pain inside her chest, and then turned to point the knife up at her assailant. Shock gripped her when she fixed on his silvery eyes, they were glowing blue. It was not the flat light of the risen dead, but something else, like light dancing on the rocks of a riverbed. The light shimmered and she thought she could hear the distant crash of waves.

Shouted voices sounded all around them, new ones, probably more guards armed and ready to kill them all, but Dany didn't look away. Her death was right there in front of her, there was no need to look for it.

"I'm sorry Cha!" One of the echoing voices was Maig. The tussling noises of her defensive tug of war had stopped.

"Maig! Wait!" Now the boy, their would be rescuer, and the plain hurt in his voice was punctuated by a splash as the girl probably dove into the water to swim away and escape.

It served Dany right for thinking she could trust someone again, even for just _one_ damnable task.

She braced herself and stood, chest screaming as she held the blade straight out in front of her. How in the hells did one fight with this thing? It couldn't be much harder than swinging a sword when besieged by the-

No, she wasn't going to revisit that memory, not right now. Not when she needed to keep her wits about her and try to fight with this...tiny sword.

Names were called and steel drawn with the whispering threat of death, she would welcome it. Here, at long last, there would be no Drogon to save her, no magic left to spend.

But she had been wrong. So very wrong. Her opponent's eyes had done more than glow, they had called the restless tide to them. 

The orders turned to screams and then the roar of water dominated everything as it blasted through the crosshatched holes of the protective outer gate. Sea foam surged around them and she felt the cool water lick at her ankles then start to rise. It filled the cavern and obscured the floor entirely. The new arrivals tried to turn and run, but the rushing liquid and smooth stone proved a treacherous combination, they fell as soon as moved.

Mouse was laughing now, eyes ablaze and mouth opened wide. Dany found her voice joined to his,  rising in shrill hysteria. Her laugh was not in triumph, as his was, no, it was in despair at the very last and best of the injurious ironies of her life. She really should just give up, let go and let the world carry on without her. It would be the better for it.

Daenerys was still laughing when the foam tickled at her throat and chin just before the shimmering surface closed over her head.

Then all she knew was darkness.


	14. Truth and Consequences

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the late drop this week, I was competing at a jiu jitsu competition on Weds and MrsMunky fought this morning, I lost my first match and she got bronze, and now the weekend is for eating All The Things after making weight on fight day.

**Keen-Eye**

 

"-they said the whole cavern was full of water, that's no coincidence, I tell ya, that's the work of a blasted Storm-Caller!"

"With Ecktor buying up half the Shard holdings these days? Hardly, there hasn't been one that strong since The Shattering."

"Not  _ here _ , no, but they said she came from someplace far off, yeah? Maybe they've got more Shards on the Mainland, or maybe they figured out how to make new ones."

Keen-Eye stirred the soup they had made her eat after her release from the medical wing and tried not to focus on the gossip. Her hand shook a little, and the traitor of a spoon rattled against the stoneware. The faint tinkling noise started to turn heads her way and she had to clamp down on the urge to steady it with her other hand. The victim of the mythic Storm-Caller displaying uncontrollable after effects would have provided even more of a spectacle than the gossip itself. Keen-Eye had been towards the back of the cavern when the water had exploded through the grate and then turned impossibly deadly. It hadn't made any sense, no other building or District had been affected by the overflowing canal water. In fact, the tide had been going out and was supposed to be at its lowest point all night before the attack on the cavern.

Six had drowned, including the strange woman she had been charged with guarding. All but two had been resuscitated by Elder Varin's harried staff. Holdant Basile, who had been acting as dock guard and had his ankles bound when the tide rushed in, was the first of the casualties to come in. Keen-Eye had caught a glimpse of his pale and too still face when they brought him in. The fish belly white skin was pocked with a crimson smattering of burst vessels that mottled his grimace frozen expression, as though the life within him was trying to burst free, and was denied escape by the floodwater. It was too near to her own experience and just that one glance was going to give her nightmares for the next three seasons. The other, Alain, had been the Rafter actually slated for the shift, he had a bad heart and the violence needed to press the water out of his lungs proved too much for his body to take.

Keen-Eye had failed and let the woman escape, and now two Holdants, two members of  _ her family _ , were dead because of it.

Would they expel her? She'd had a few other infractions throughout her sixteen years as an adopted ward of the Holdfast, but nothing this dangerous. This incident with the stranger made a lifetime of mischief making with Mouse into nothing at all.  _ Mouse… _

He’d been quiet and motionless for so long that she was scarce afraid there would be a third body added to the lists. Mouse who never stopped moving, Mouse who always had a retort on his lips and slept so lightly he might have been on watch.

Then he coughed up mouthfuls of water and started breathing and it was everything she could do to keep herself from running to him like the little girl she had been when they were growing up.

Mouse-Foot was four years her senior, but had been at the Holdfast as long as Keen-Eye. It was odd to have a child abandoned when they were that old, usually they formed up packs of Minnows and made their own way in the Shallows, but it was not unheard of, especially after a plague of Mauvassair had ravaged the more common areas of Détente, which it had.

It was why Keen-Eye was here, or so the Elders had told her. She and Mouse were bound together by more than orphanage, they were the only two adoptees that had the eyes. The Wai-Tau had Eyes of the Sea, reflective pools of silver with shimmering dark beneath, like sunlight on dark water. All the full blooded descendents, like Mouse, had them, and some of the unlucky half blooded ones got them as well. Keen-Eye was one of the latter, and it singled her out as nothing else in the world ever had. Everyone saw her eyes and assumed she belonged out there on the water instead of right here on Détente where she'd been raised, but she couldn't go out and join a migrant flotilla. Keen-Eye didn't speak their language and couldn't sail worth a cracked shell bead. 

A chair scraped against the stone floor across from her and someone sat down. Keen-Eye didn’t bother looking up, instead she kept her attention focused on the soup bowl. She would  _ not _ allow her fingers to shake, not now.

“If it’s rumors you want, I’ve nothing to tell you.” Keen-Eye said.

“Supér, since I already know everything that went on last night...and most of this morning.” 

Keen-Eye’s head shot up so fast that the unkempt mess of her hair blocked her sight and tickled her brow before returning to its messy, gravity defying normalcy. That wasn’t some onlooker, this was Holdant Caro, her fencing instructor and the best damned blade in all the Holdfast. Mouse fancied himself a better blade than Holdant Caro. This was due to the fact that in five hundred and forty seven bouts between him and Holdant Caro, he had managed to disarm her all of once, and this when a passing gull had shat in her eye and blinded her for a moment. His victory was short lived, as Holdant Caro had proceeded to kick him in the gut, steal his blade and then pressed the blunt practice edge against his throat until he gurgled surrender.

She was the Holdant that was supposed to take the shift that Basile had been woken for.

If she had been there instead of Basile…

No, Keen-Eye had learned to keep what if’s where they belonged, far, far away from her past, and she was not going to let them in now.

Keen-Eye swallowed her next bite of broth as she contemplated in the brief silence. “Is there anything you can tell  _ me, _ then?”

“That depends.” Holdant Caro flashed a tight smile that never touched her eyes. Keen-Eye noticed the dark smudges beneath them, then, and whites so bloodshot that her hazel eyes, a remnant of her nomadic Dranger ancestry, looked more green than brown. “How much have you already heard?”

“I was there when the Elders questioned Mouse, after...after they brought him back…” Her spoon rattled against the well of her bowl, the tinkling muffled by the tawny broth that splashed onto the pale tabletop. It was made from old bamboo that had been laminated into a longtable with resin.

Holdant Caro pushed back her chair and made to stand. “Keen-Eye, it’s fine, really, I can come back.”

Keen-Eye dropped the spoon into her bowl and latched on to her instructor’s wrist with every last sliver of her desperate, panic fueled strength. “No,  _ I’m  _ fine,  _ really. _ Sit down,” Holdant Caro raised a dark brow at the order and Keen-Eye released her wrist fast as a forge hot blade, “please.”

Holdant Caro sat and rested her palms on the tabletop, fingers intertwined, waiting. “I will ask you again, how much have you already heard.”

“ _ Mouse _ ,” she bit out the word, “Mouse mentioned that you had gone on an errand for Elder Medi about the stranger, which is why it was Holdant Basile on shift.”

“That’s correct.” She gave nothing else.

“If...if it was about the stranger, I’d think you would go to Steelmoor to talk about defense and, if this woman is as dangerous as everyone is afraid she is, about...confinement.”

The scarred fingers drummed across the tabletop, tendons vivid and dancing beneath sun tanned skin. “Anything else?”

Keen-Eye needed to think bigger, Elder Medi was always telling her so. The Noble Families were magic, and no one imprisoned  _ them _ , so why would this woman be any more of a threat? Then it hit her: dragons and airships.

“She’s from the Em-”

“Shh!” Holdant Caro interrupted, then continued, terse and quiet. “Yes, you’ve got it, but I don’t need you shouting it out to the entire Hold.” 

The stranger was from the Mainland, she had flown beyond the generations old barriers of stone and tide that had hidden them. The woman was among them now, and their location was at risk to whatever and whomever ruled the Empyre these days. The Noble Families had stayed, they had stakes in the sparkling dust that the Wai-Tau pulled from the ocean. They had no reason to leave, no reason to put their own homes, fortunes and hierarchy at stake, but this stranger?

Keen-Eye spoke again, this time in a much softer voice. “She’s going to tear everything out from right under us, isn’t she?”

“We’re not sure.” Holdant Caro let out a sigh. “Of everyone, you’ve spent the most time with her, what do you think she’ll do?”

Keen-Eye thought back to earlier in the night, earlier, before everything went so very wrong.

“I...I don’t know. Sanc, she didn’t even tell me her  _ name, _ Caro, how am I supposed to know what her plans are?”

“Her name is Daenerys Targaryen, for what little it’s worth. She gave it to Mouse and Basile, and now one of them is dead and the other was barely spared.  _ Think _ , Keen-Eye, what’s her temper? Is she brittle, will she crack under pressure?”

“No.” She said, remembering a lingering touch on her wrist and pale, dawn colored eyes that she wanted to fall into. Keen-Eye felt a heat rise from her neck and flush the tips of her ears. “She’s not-” she raised the soup bowl and drank the broth direct from the edge to quench her suddenly dry throat, “brittle.” She took a breath, then another, steadying herself. “She’s going to make plans, and she’s going to follow them through if we can’t stop her.”

“Consider her stopped.” Holdant Caro reached across the table and laid a reassuring hand atop Keen-Eye’s own, had it been shaking?

“Steelmoor?” Keen-Eye asked. Criminals were processed through Steelmoor, sometimes the Wordsmithing Clerks from the Erudite Spire might help in a case deciding their innocence, but if they were found guilty… 

“Maybe soon, but not just yet. That’s why I need you with me, whenever you feel ready.”

“What about Mouse? He’s a far better sword than I am.”

“Did I ask for your sword?” Holdant Caro looked at her, expectant.

No, she had asked for Keen-Eye to accompany her for the talks to come, so that she might voice her opinion on important matters, matters that could alter the whole of Détente. Why Keen-Eye? She had failed, her charge had escaped and it was her fault two Holdants were dead. She dropped her gaze to the tabletop and dug a thumbnail into a crevice where the old laminate was separating.

“No, you didn’t, but I’m probably due for expulsion later today anyway, if Elder Varin has his way.”

“Elder Varin is too busy with his staff and the injured to pursue a grudge outside his area of responsibility. You are my student, and I have vouched for you, and Elder Medi still sponsors you. One Elder has always been enough before, and that trend will continue so long as the greater Council has anything to say about it.”

“You...you vouched for me?” Keen-Eye looked up and met Holdant Caro’s eyes, steady and reassuring. “After everything?”

“I did, and I do, please don’t make me regret it. Matchio knows we don’t win every duel we set out to fight, but you  _ do _ have to stand back up when the loss doesn’t kill you.”

She’d thought this loss had done just that, but here was Holdant Caro, who had known her longer than anyone except Mouse, and who was willing to put her trust in her one more time.

“I’ll do it.” Keen-Eye said, and realized, with no small measure of surprise, that she meant it.

“Excellent,” Holdant Caro pushed her chair out and stood, extending a much scarred hand and forearm towards Keen-Eye.

She clasped the woman’s hand in kind from her seat, a promise, but nothing so formal as standing up to do it. To the rest of the diners, it would just look like an everyday parting from a student to a teacher.

“Thank you, Holdant.”

Holdant Caro smiled then, and this time it crinkled the edges of her eyes. “I would say it was nothing, but it really wasn’t.” She motioned towards the bowl. “Eat up, and then get some rest, you’re going to need it.”

She walked out of the dining commons and left Keen-Eye alone with her thoughts once more. The voices and gossip picked up around her, but she paid them no mind. Keen-Eye turned her attention back to her soup, nearly cold now after the conversation, but she didn’t mind at all. When she lifted the spoon up and daintily slurped from it she minded even less.

Her hands were still, and steady as iron.


	15. The Great Dany Escape III

**Dany**

 

Death had evaded her yet again. Dany had thought a flooded cavern and a room full of armed guards after an escaped captive would have been enough to do it, but the world seemed to think otherwise. Coming back had been painful, body and soul, if she even had one of those…

Everything hurt. Inside and out were one never ending cycle of new and excruciating aches or harsh, jabbing pains that wracked her every time she drew breath. If her rib hadn't been cracked before, it very much was now, and Dany did her best to be still and take slow inhales with the depth of a battlefield grave during Winter.

"She's healthy enough to do whatever you need to for the sake of justice."

That was the Maester, Elder Something, or whatever they had here that was similar to a learned man with his silver link. He had been angry as soon as they brought her back again and Daenerys had the audacity to draw breath and live. Some others in the cavern hadn't been as lucky, and the old man seemed to blame her for all of it.

Natural toned roughspun clothed the two serious looking guards that flanked either side of her bed. They wore something that looked a bit like a long tunic. Their waists were accentuated with a bright sash the same vivid orange as the Rafter coats. Atop that sash were tanned leather belts, and from those belts hung an array of weapons.

Dany was back in the same damnable predicament, but with more guards and scrutiny focused upon her this time. She could have laughed, and almost did, except that would have driven knives of pain into her chest and given the guards and the not-Maester an excuse to strike her out of misplaced vengeance. She had tried to explain about the boy, Mouse, and how the water had all been his doing, but no one was listening to a word she said. It was much easier to paint the strange foreigner as a malicious spy and a traitor than to use her as a witness. Instead she just lay there, staring up at the too bright globes that sprouted from the ceiling to provide that strange whitish illumination that had shone from the lighthouse tower. 

The guard on her left, a woman with a serious lack of neck atop her brawny shoulders, crossed Dany's wrists so they touched and held them up for her partner, who managed to make his ale belly gut look small compared to the giantess, to cinch together with a leather strap. It hurt, but not as badly as her chest, and kept her elbows close to her stomach. This hunched her shoulders and left her no comfortable resting position, which was fine, since the guard on her right hauled her upright by the strap and kept tugging until she was off the pallet and on her feet. Pain screamed inside her, clawing from within like a caged animal, but Dany would not cry out and give them the satisfaction of breaking her. 

“You try to escape again,” the woman whispered harshly into her ear, “and what happens after will make drowning and a few broken ribs look like a stroll on the pier.”

Dany nodded mutely and regretted it. Her head spun a bit from the abrupt change in position and she had to blink away colored starbursts and the purple afterimage of the ceiling globes before she could see down any of the dim hallways they travelled through. The man led, and she kept up as best she could. The bonds tugged on her arms, and each tug shot right through her chest and made the savage pain inside slash at her a little deeper. Perhaps a drop or two slid down her cheek and fell to the floor, but Daenerys would not sob.

The walk was long, arduous, and led their small party outside. It was full day now, the first day Dany would face in this new world, and it might be the last, depending on their views on torture and execution, so she took in the sights and smells around her with the desperation of the gallows bound.

There was a proliferation of flowers, in small, well kept planters banked by benches, and bursting off the branches of every fruit tree that lined the edges of this public space, whatever it was. Fat bees buzzed in lazy arcs, burrowing deep into the blossoms and making them shake contrary to the wind. The wind!

Dany took a deep breath, gritted her teeth against the pain that followed, and tried her best to focus on the scents it carried. The sweet, heavy smell of blossoms and the clean, spicy scent of herbs overlay the salt from the sea and the turned up clay from the nearby practice yard. It made her miss her childhood home in Braavos, and the little girl with hopes and dreams that had nothing to do with empire. When they passed a familiar looking citrus tree and the sharp perfume of lemon blossoms hit her she collapsed to her knees, sobbing into the thick loam that surrounded the roots, emptying herself in an endless expression of the agony that filled her.

The man almost toppled with her, then the woman shouted an oath and they both drew steel and this was really going to be it, wasn’t it?

“I don’t want to die here.” Her voice shook, whether from pain or fear, she couldn't say.

"You escaping?" It was the woman.

"No...just…" What _was_ this feeling? "heartsick…I guess..."

"You calling tides?" The woman asked.

"No, I can't, I-"

"Then shut up and walk." Came the terse response. "Any more delays and you _will_ die here, understand?"

Dany fought her own body to stand back up, and did just that.

 

* * *

 

They had walked through the rest of that open, common area, with onlookers clad in undyed cloth and the occasional orange sash staring at her with blatant curiosity, or loathing, depending on which gossip they seemed to partake of, until they stood face to face with a small mountain. Well, perhaps it was a large hill, but for all the energy Dany had left it was the highest peak in all the realm, and they were asking her to climb it.

“A little more ways, _then_ you can rest for as long as you like, I promise.” The woman’s smile was false, like the cry of large predators mimicking the screams of children. It gave her no comfort at all.

But it was walk until an uncertain end or die where she stood, so Dany kept moving, willing herself up the sharp incline the same way she had kept on in the Red Wastes, a relentless momentum that was not swift, but neither was it exhaustible. 

After a moment, the man finally spoke to her. “Y’know, there _are_ stairs cut into the rock, yes?”

 _Stairs?_ Dany looked about her, stupidly, until she saw row upon row of neatly carved steps rising up next to her, next to her where her captors had been strolling.

“Thank you.” Dany whispered. Her voice was rough, and her throat ached, though whether it was from the fit of crying or near drowning, she didn’t know.

Dany sidestepped until she was resting on an even ledge with well worn edges that had once been precise. Now the only effort was to lift her aching feet and then pull her body up after them, step by excruciating step. When they had made it up to a flat space Dany managed to look around. In the mountainside, carved out in the same manner as the stone docks, were endless warrens of rooms and passageways.

The man stepped in front of her. “Almost there.” His voice was almost...cheerful…”Follow me if’n’it pleas-” 

The woman cleared her throat loudly behind her, and Dany realized her lumbering form was much closer than she had thought.

“Follow me.” He said again, this time much flatter.

It turned out he hadn’t been lying, and after a hundred or so steps came the room that she was supposed to go into. The room could contain a pallet and a chamberpot, or it could contain a varied array of the implements of torture. Dany didn’t know, all she knew was that she was exhausted, and that she had ceased caring about her impending fate. They could rip her apart and pull the entrails from her still breathing body and she was too weak to stop them, worrying about it, then, was an exercise in futility.

There was a thick metal grate sprouting from the rock a body length or two into the tunnel of the room.

“Hold her.” 

The man grasped the leather strap around her wrists and held it almost taut, keeping Dany from bolting, not that she could. Once the woman was convinced that her prisoner was secure she pulled a large metal key, discolored with age, from somewhere in her uniform and shoved it into a square of metal set in the middle of the grate. There was a metallic click that echoed and pinged off the stone around them. 

Dany, and it seemed her guards as well, stared at the barred door, waiting for it to swing open. When it didn’t, the woman set about it with the threatening force she had been holding over Dany for the duration of the escort. 

“Lazy idiots, no excuse for it.” She wrapped her meaty hands around one of the door bars and tugged, straining until Dany could see individual cords of muscle and sinew standing out in stark relief on the broad appendage that served as her guard’s neck. “Should...have...oiled...the...damned-” 

The door swung open with a bang so loud that it hurt Dany’s ears, and sounds had been muffled for her after a few years spent in the roar of wind and dragonfire while diving into combating armies. 

“Get her in there.”

Dany started forward before the pull of her wrists started a cascading avalanche of pain that eclipsed everything else around her. For every step the man took, Dany had to take two of her own to keep the leash slack. Despite her cooperation, he kept looking back over his shoulder at either her or the other guard. He did this right before the looming bars of her soon to be prison passed them, stumbling as his booted toe hit the thick band of metal that attached to the base of the bars.

“Embrien’s flaming arsehole!” He cursed.

He still had the leash in hand when he fell through the now open door and Dany could either topple down with him, and hurt, or stay standing, and hurt. She leaned back and bent her knees to give herself a bit more of a base before the leather went from slack to straining and tried to take her wrists along with it. She set her heels and tried her very best to keep her elbows tucked close to her chest as a tearing sensation consumed her, flaying her nerves inside and out. Dany clenched her jaw and pulled back against the lead, almost falling down herself when the band of leather snapped loose and all her momentum was set in the wrong direction.

Freed, Dany took in the tableau. The man looked up in frozen horror, and then the exiled Targaryen looked over her shoulder and locked eyes with the aurochs masquerading as a woman. Dany did not falter, did not blink, she simply stared and channeled through that link all of the rage and betrayal that had been building up within her since the Usurper entered her life. If dragonfire could travel through the strength of her gaze, it would have immolated. The woman dropped her eyes first, and Dany deliberately turned her back on her before taking one bare footfall over the metal threshold into chosen captivity.

“You will exit my cell, _Holdant._ ” She commanded, and the fallen man clambered to obey.

Daenerys wrestled the leather binding her wrists until it loosened and fell to the stone floor. No longer bound, she stood tall in her night shift and took stock of the guards’ demeanor. The man was scared and panicking, but he was obeying her orders as well as his original task when he bolted from the room and quickly shut the heavy door, never meeting her eyes.

The sun was lower now and some of its rays lit up the cavern. Dany took a slow, studied look behind her, she could see a chamberpot and a fat, wide mouthed jug of what was probably water, since the reflected light danced across the ceiling of her cell. She turned back to unnerve her captors. Perhaps they would starve her, but it would be awhile before she perished from thirst.  At least she had eaten the night before, though it was probably moldy bread rather than bacon from now on, if anything at all.

"You stand guard until relief comes." The woman handed the heavy key into the hands of Daenerys' cringing guard.

"Normal rotation?" He asked.

"Not sure, that's the Council's decision, and your relief will tell you once they know."

"Until then?"

"Until then you stand here, and if anything unusual happens you stab that imbued bitch right through the heart until the unusual part stops."

The woman walked out of the cave, and the "imbued bitch" seethed, wishing she could _actually_ summon tides to drown her hulking adversary.

But no, Dany had chosen captivity over death, so she might as well enjoy it. She turned, with only a little bit of a sigh, and then went to explore the parts of her cell she hadn't seen. There was a pallet lifted off the floor a bit, with an old but well patched blanket, and many square and circular outlines staining the floor. Had they been using this cell for _storage_ before she arrived? Between this evidence and everyone’s strange behavior towards her, these were not a people accustomed to holding captives. This far back there was very little light from the distant sun, and the edges of the room were shrouded in a darkness that made her squint trying to look further into it. Dany moved closer to it, putting her hand out in front of her to feel for obstacles while she waited for her eyes to adjust to the dimness. 

She walked three steps, then another five, when no wall loomed up before her she wondered further about the space that held her. There were no shackles, no neighboring prisoners bemoaning and screaming their fates, there was just...space, lengths and lengths of space. Dany took ten more steps and finally encountered the back wall to her spacious holding cell, an end discovered, she turned and set about examining the walls on either side of her. 

The stone here was cut with that same unnatural smoothness that created the docks, and other than a thick coating of dust, the edges were perfectly flat. Her fingers slid over a sharp edged divot at the same moment she banged the edge of her hip into something protruding from the wall. She tensed from the bump and waited for the rekindled flare of agony to crescendo and pass, panting tiny gasps and squeezing her eyes shut as tight as she could until it subsided. She would go much, _much_ slower on her next discovery route. 

Dany reached out a hand into the darkness and felt for the object that had tried to impale her. It wasn't sharp, in fact, it was blunt and rounded, like the hilt of a blade. Dany wrapped her fingers around it and pulled with as much strength as she could manage. It didn't budge, so she tried pushing it into the stone, nothing happened. In frustration she slapped at it and heard the click of metal on metal. That…that was different. 

She tried again, and there were more clicking sounds. It reminded her of a much smaller version of the machine the boy had used to open the gate, perhaps this would do the same for her. Dany spun the handle, cranking as much as she could before her spasming muscles prevented any more movement.

Nothing happened, no gate raising, no mysterious escape far away from this place and these people who _also_ hated her, she was still trapped as much as before. Dany's instincts were to smash her fists against the wall and vent her impotent rage, but that would just hurt and leave her curled up on the floor in a wetly whimpering ball of surrender. Instead, Dany felt for that crisp stone carving on the wall, tracing her fingers along the edges as she tried to make sense of it. She put both hands against the stone, carefully minding the location of the crank handle, and placed a finger on either side of the chiseled line, following it upward at a slight curve. It branched off midway into a horizontal line that slashed upward in both directions. 

Something tickled at her memory, familiar and not. Dany kept tracing, piecing together the lines and intersections in her mind until it struck her.

“ _Jehittan!”_ She blurted the old Valyrian rune aloud and suddenly the walls were awash with a piercing light that poured out of the wall etching.

Her ancestors _had_ been here, and the proof was quite brilliant and blinding.

“Hey! What’d you do there? That looks pretty damned _unusual_ to me.”

Dany looked back towards the barred door and saw her guard moving toward it, key in one hand and blade in the other. She couldn’t stop him, not injured as she was, and the only weapons to hand were the jug and the chamberpot, which were closer to the door than they were to her. No, it was certain death or, Dany looked back towards the dead end of her cell and started towards it at a sprint.

There was a rune carved on it, near the top, it was _Nerni_ , the rune for “door.”

“ _Nerni!”_ She shouted, and waited for the magic to rescue her.

Nothing happened, and the gate was unlocked, her guard was going to come in and that would be the end of her discovery of this magic.

“Move! You damned stupid useless- _open_ won’t you?!”

The metal door was stuck fast, but her dead end wall shook just a little.

The accent! It had been too long and these people didn’t speak pure Valyrian anymore, that’s why they didn’t use any of this, it couldn’t understand them!

“ _Drāmmagon_!” Dany yelled the word with the proper stresses and inflection and what was a stone wall slid up into the ceiling and vanished, leaving an open tunnel with a bar of light shooting down along the wall into someplace that wasn’t here.

Daenerys stepped through the stone door just before she heard the creak of metal and pounding footsteps behind her.

“ _Bēmagon_.” The Targaryen said, and watched the stone of the mountain obey her the same as her children did. The wedge of rock slammed back down, separating Dany from her captor, and she took a leisurely stroll down to where the lights were leading her.

The downward incline leveled out and the close arch of stone opened up into a huge cavern, it was larger than the dragon pit had been, and perhaps if she had raised her dragons here…

No, she had made her choices, and those choices made her who she was today. Dany did not feel especially good about the person made of those decisions, but she was alive, and that meant that things could change, that she could heal.

A gold coin fell off a pedestal in the middle of the cavern, possibly disturbed by the movement of the stone earlier. It made a soft plink that echoed softly in the cavern. Dany lost track of the coin as soon as it fell. They all looked identical, really, and there were thousands of them there, maybe even millions, just piled up and stacked one atop the other. Gems as well, and some archaic jewelry nestled up with the occasional bejeweled sword.

Daenerys Targaryen smiled to herself. Yes, this was going to do a great deal towards changing her life for the better. She took a step forward and plunged her fingers into the mound of treasure, pulling her cupped hands out and watching a few coins fall from her overfilled palms. She was going to need some sort of bag to carry all this with her, too bad she didn’t-

Dany looked down at the long sleeping gown, she tried to grab the hem, spilled all her coins in the process, and then gripped the edge of the cloth in her now empty hand and shoveled gold into her makeshift pouch with the other. When she had as much as she could carry she stood up and looked around for any more runes that would tell her how to exit this cavern. Dany spotted the bare hint of one when the ethereal lighting flickered out and plunged her into darkness.

“ _Jehittan_!” She tried again, waiting for the lights to come back.

Nothing happened. Now Daenerys was alone in the dark with untold riches and not an inkling of where to go next. She shuffled forward, one hand clutching the sack of her gown as the other felt along the smooth stone that surrounded her.

There had to be another crank here.

Somewhere...


	16. Best Laid Plans

  **Maig**

Not drowning was excellent. Losing half the contents of her pack in the turbulent rush of water that had come from nowhere? Not so excellent. Those supplies had been hard to come by, and she had bartered, or stolen, fiercely for them. Then there was the matter of Cha…

Cha was alive, he had to be. She would feel it if he wasn’t, wouldn’t she? No, he was quick, and smaller than those dolts that had come for them. It would have been too little and far too late for the Holdfast if it hadn’t been for that cursed water.

_"Maig! Wait!"_

Well, maybe not too late. She had jumped and swum under the grate _before_ the surging wave knocked her against the metal bars she had just escaped from. Maig had abandoned her partner before things had turned from possibly deadly to certainly so, and though Maman would be proud of her for surviving and making it out of the Holdfast without being caught, as well as breaking _into_ it in the first place, that wasn’t much of a consolation when it came to the hollow place inside her, the place that felt less empty when Cha was around. 

She trudged back to the Shallows in the early morning, not caring if the nosey busybodies of Chevalier decided to stop counting their money for a moment and stare out their windows, aghast at the half drowned urchin dripping salt water onto the neat stonework bordering their canals. Not all of the water was from the canals, and Maig wiped the back of her sleeve across her face, irritated when the soaked fabric did nothing but smear water on her cheeks. 

Maig crossed the first bridge on her way towards the Broken Heart Lagoon, four more and she’d be home. Halfway across, her lackadaisical steps caused a full body collision with a messenger hurrying past.

He was clad in the colors of the Bacque family, navy, dark as midnight, with silver piping trimming the edges of his uniform. Maig took a mental note for Maman’s ever growing list of the goings ons inside and out of Détente. She looked at his receding back, and then down at the worn but expensive looking Chrono-Disc now resting in her palm. That little score would help her buy back the supplies that were probably sitting at the bottom of the Broken Heart right now. That messenger was surely going to be late now, if he wasn’t before, but that wasn’t _her_ problem, he should have been paying more attention and seen her in his path.

Maig stooped a bit and shrugged one shoulder until a pack strap slid off, she tugged the cinched mouth open and dropped the Chrono-Disc in with the rest of her treasures before resettling the bag and continuing on her not so merry way.

Her stomach rumbled. 

That was going to be a problem, since it was a long walk back to the Shallows and the home that Maman kept for them. Except it was approaching midday, and Maman would be out using plays on the hapless until far too long after dinner. Maig considered the Chrono-Disc, but only inexperienced idiots fenced something they lifted that same day, and she hadn’t been one of those for awhile. She stared at the edge of the lagoon and the opaque greenish waters beyond before making her decision and backtracking to take a bridge leading south. There were fruit blossoms on the stonefruit and apple trees in the Holdfast, and that meant the citrus was ripe for the plucking.

Not _in_ the Holdfast, of course, she’d only go back into that place upon pain of death, which, she expected, was exactly how the Holdants felt about _her_. She crossed an eastward bridge through the heart of one of the older Chevalier neighborhoods. A few house staff were milling about on their daily tasks, some gave her dirty looks that set all her self preservation instincts awake. It was broad daylight and she was not at all where someone who looked like Maig was supposed to be. There was no help for it, so she soldiered on, trying not to shrink into herself every time an errant glance strayed her way, ready to bolt at the first shrill whistle from a Steelmoor commissioned Peacekeeper. She turned another corner and saw the green and gold accents of Sardou, it bled a little of the tension from her shoulders. Sardou was a family of Greenmages, and they spent the bulk of their time minding their own damned business while tending to their gardens and greenhouses or pushing the limits of possibility over at Lanthorn Towers, where spires made of strangler fig and mage hardened bamboo sprouted taller than the Erudite Spire itself. Topiary bushes in the shapes of animals, both fanciful and not, peeked over a sturdy wall of live bamboo woven with flowering vines that bloomed in bright bursts of color against the vibrant green backdrop.

Like most things in Détente, looks were deceiving, and those same dazzling petals warned against hidden spines or poisonous sap, disabling anyone foolish enough to try breaking into the compound. Maig respected that, a Noble Family did not stay in power through mercy and free flowing generosity, Sardou was no different. Maig gave the pretty ward a wide berth as she closed in on her original target, forgotten and overgrown as it was.

History was a funny thing, it got written by the winners and anyone else had their story stolen from them. This was why Maig hated the Holdfast and all their stupid Sancly teachings, they only told one version of the story that made up Détente, and who even knew who _those_ winners had been. That’s why she made it a point to go trade with the Wai-Tau and learn anything they knew about the land. The sailor traders had been in the area _long_ before the Empyre had tried to invade, and even before the people who had made the giant stepped structure before her. It once had another name that had been lost to the ages, like so much else, but it was now known as The Épan, which was short for ‘flourish,’ and that definitely fit the bill for this hulking mass of one upmanship.

Ancient white stone blocks fused together seamlessly in a seven tiered stairway made for gods, if Maig believed in such things, each step twice her height as it rose up into the sky and suddenly stopped in a flat roof that was shrouded in mists except on the hottest of days during the Dry Season. On those days, the damned thing shone so bright you could barely look at it.

Tool marks pocked the stone at the very base of the thing. Industrious thieves had thought the valuable stone had been little more than a veneer they could pry off and turn a tidy profit on. It turned out the whole thing was made up of the stuff, and it was hard as some of the granite that came in off the neighboring islands, islands that sent in everything Détente didn't already have. It was also easy as fruit lifting on a busy market day to figure out where the stuff had come from, and anyone caught selling it, or sometimes even buying, was sent to Steelmoor, doublequick, and then out on a boat to go mine that granite themselves.

The treasures taken these days were no longer made of stone, and Maig was glad it was still fairly early in the day, else all her effort would be for scraps. Voices called out to one another on the upper tiers, though no one had been kind enough to leave a ladder at the foot for her. 

Maig walked around the sheer base blocks towards the side where tenacious vines had woven themselves together. The thick bunches stuck better to the smooth rock, which was good for both plants and Maig. She wedged her foot through a small loop at the base before hoisting herself up and gripping the tangle of growth anyplace she could cram her fingers into. 

The day was turning out warmer than she’d thought, and between that and the humidity that always clung to this place, her almost dry clothing was soaked through with sweat by the time she managed to throw a hand over the top and slap a sticky-wet palm onto the flat stone of the next tier. She pressed herself up after it and then collapsed onto the surface. 

That was fine, she had made it up the first tier, and every monolithic step beyond the first had a roundabout ramp connecting each level. Maig took a breath before forcing herself upright. She trudged along around the sharp square corners of this platform, the songs of both birds and people filling the thick air. She spun left once, then a half a hundred steps and the ramp was before her. An entire beauteous forest of shrubbery and flowers rioted in color and splendor around her, but Maig cared less for it all than the random canal turds floating out at low tide. 

It was three more turns and another ramp up before the next tier, when the voices became more intelligible and the thick perfume of the fruit trees descended upon her. The sharp tang that only citrus made filled the air. Maig paused a moment to take a deep breath of it, the effect spoiled only a little by the mass of unwashed bodies mixed with a cloying edge of rot. Curls of shrivelled peel or animal chewed fruit littered the leaf and blossom strewn ground around her, some carrying the bright blues and greens of blooming mold. A few types of citrus had a peel good for making fragrant oils, but not all, and not everyone had access to a distillery.

Some that _had_ the distillery also had little interest in using it to make pretty smelling oils. There was a spirit made from Épan fruit served at the night clubs of Nox Insomnis. The drink was said to hit harder than a burst kinetibank, and that was only the proper version. Someone in the Shallows had a condensing still that made a similar beverage, capable of degreasing clockwork parts as well as the inside of your gut. After trying the Shallows version with two straight days of vomiting, Maig preferred the fruit.

A few cautious glances turned her way as she approached the laden trees, ignoring her once they saw no threat. This place was rarely patrolled by Steelmoor, but picking this fruit was _technically_ theft. Theft from _whom_ , Maig wasn’t sure. It was an old law and had been around for hundreds of years, which meant the people who made it in the first place were probably dust inside the center of this...whatever this stone tier was beyond a fruit garden.

 Shrugging, Maig set out to gather her meal. There were some lower hanging fruits left, but not many. She walked up to an untended tree, stretching her body out as she stood on the very tips of her toes. Grubby fingers with a nicked and bleeding nailbed or two surrounded a ripe orange. Maig pulled and twisted it off a branch, immensely glad that whoever had planted these had chosen dwarf varieties as well as the bigger ones. Never in a million seasons would she be tall enough to pick fruit from the larger trees without assistance, though the bamboo ladders leaned up against a few of the trunks meant she wasn’t the only one with this issue.

Large, thick skinned oranges filled the crook of her left arm as she moved to the next tree. There were a few kids ringed around this one, but Maig jostled in between. She kept her stash close, reaching with her right hand to collect the tinier ones with sweet, blood red fruit under the peel. Maig barely managed to reach an arm in to get two of the small flat ones, whose skin flaked off when you did so much as look at it. She even stopped at an empty and forgotten tree to gather a fistful of the small tart ones no bigger than her thumb, for variety. 

Her feast assembled, Maig turned about in search of her favorite dining bench. Many were full of children or families on an impromptu...what had Cha called it? A _pique-nique?_   

_Cha…_

No, she wasn’t going to think like that. Cha was fine, would be _great_ even, she just needed to give everything time to blow over. Time that included her taking care of herself, which meant she needed to eat. Seating was scattered about in an almost regular pattern that Maig could never quite remember until-

Ah yes, there it was. She strode over to the white stone bench, the surface dusted with crumbled leaf and yellow pollen. Twining vines draped along the edges and hid intricate but nonsensical carvings coating the bench legs. Maig had tried to decipher them, and failed each and every time. She plunked her burden down upon the ancient masterwork, corralling the brightly colored fruit by sweeping her arms in and giving her meal a greedy hug. The fruit stopped rolling, and Maig jumped up next to it, hoping the warm stone beneath her ass would help her dry off rather than sweat more.

First the easy ones. She shucked the skin off the flatter oranges, _did they have different names if they were all orange?_ and bit the fruit in half, ignoring the stuck together segments as she mashed the pulp into deliciousness. She spat out seeds with all the grace of a half cocked sailor who didn’t have enough saved to buy company for the night. The little tart ones next, to reset before the blood red fruit. 

Maig leaned to the side as she bit into that one, and the murdered lifeblood of the thing splashed down her chin and marred the white stone even further. Then only the largest and most difficult remained. Maig was turning one over in her small hands, trying to find the best point of attack, when a shaking rumble beneath her rolled the remaining fruit away. 

Men and women shouted from the trees, and Maig could hear the terrified screams of the children with them. There was a grating sound, like a Junker dumping the entire contents of the Pharos Arx clocktower into Scythe Bay. Maig jumped to her feet, immediately regretting it when the ground slipped from beneath her and she toppled down, following after the fruit as she hit the ground. Birds took wing in a flurry of cawing feathers, and the cloud of them darkened the sky above her. Someone possessed by panic ran too close to the edge of the platform and fell down the slope, shrieking as they vanished. Maig curled up into a tiny, trembling ball, waiting for either this strange threat to end or a full building collapse to end _her_.

If she was the praying type, she would have, and many around her were currently reciting them, but Maig's bones would rot here under this rock before she broke and asked for the Sancly help of those assholes. Better to die as herself than a whimpering fake. As it was, she tried to stay calm and keep breathing, which was hard enough already without having to mumble nonsense to the empty air. 

The shaking stopped. 

In the deafening silence that followed, all Maig could hear was her frantic breathing and the caged bird thumping of her heart. She concentrated on her body, willing her breath to slow. Six breaths became four, and the roaring rush of blood in her ears abated. Another application of will and the four stretched out into one. In, out. In, out. She could do this.

A strange, muffled wail began in the stillness. All the animals of the forest had quieted in their shared panic so it was easy to hear. Others joined it, adults and children alike. Had something fallen on the other harvesters?

“Is someone out there?” It was a new voice, coming from the opposite end of the harvesters.

Were they friend or foe? Maig slowly rose up, her movements silent and studied as any purse cutting or fingersmithing on a crowded street. The newcomer kept calling and Maig turned her head side to side, trying to find the speaker. They seemed to be on the other side of the central structure, opposite the downward ramp. Maig slunk over, wincing every time the patter of her footfalls crunched an errant leaf or twig. She rounded the final corner and cautiously peeked out. 

There was nothing there. Puzzled, she poked her whole head out and checked the length and breadth of the stone floor, there was nothing and no one. 

“Hello?” 

Why was that voice so familiar? Where had she heard it before? What she _did_ know was that the voice carried from the level right below her. She took a step towards it.

A trumpet sounded from the forest and Maig had to stifle a groan as she saw the ornate banner they were carrying with them. The Runic Guild was involved now, blasted crackpot carrion feeders that they were. Steelmoor wasn't idiot enough to announce themselves if a raid was in progress.

The speaker paused and Maig thought she heard a grunt herald the distinctive clink of currency on stone.

No, she was sure of it, only coins made _that_ particular noise. As she got closer there were more tiny scraping plinks, this was more than just a strange happening, this was a _score_ , a hefty, eat great for the next mooncycle and buy Maman a new dress kind of score. She crept towards the edge of her platform and performed the tentative slow peek once more, then had to stifle a yell that threatened to brim over.

It was that damned _woman_ again. It was plain as her egg bald head that whatever mystery magic she possessed had caused the shaking. Maig wanted to shake _her_ , for all the trouble Dany of the Sky-Dragons had caused. 

Seething, Maig sat down on the edge of the platform then kicked her feet over.

"You!" She shouted at Dany, before kicking off and sliding down the steep surface. Solitary vines broke as she passed, whipping away as they stained her clothes with sharp smelling green. 

Maig jumped right before she hit the ground on the next level, the slight twinge of pain from an ankle meant she should probably have leapt sooner, but right now she didn't care.

"Maig of the Shallows." She responded, her voice irritatingly neutral beyond her accent. "You survived."

Her long gown was damp and filthy as Maig's own clothing, and the woman looked absolutely coated in stone dust. It made her already pale complexion into a ghostly one.

"Yes." She ground out, tamping down the bubbling rage beneath. "So good that you've escaped, it was just as _we_ had planned earlier." And if "we" are both standing here then won't you split all that heavy coin you are carrying?

The Runic Guild had made it to the base and they had ladders with them. Gravel pinged down around them as the rest of the Shallows harvesters took interest from above, she had to speed things up.

"Here, Dany," she injected as much caring as she could manage, "that load looks _so_ heavy, how about I carry it for you?" Maig stepped forward and shrugged off her pack, flicking it open with one wrist as Dany tried to lift the hem of her gown a little higher. She froze after only a handspan of height and made a sound of discomfort. Why was the woman so stooped? Was the coin really _that_ heavy.

"Thank you." She gasped and dumped the entire load of coin into Maig's bag. It...it was a lot of coin, and it wasn't the kind of paper and Earth-Singer alloy money that the Nobles used, no, that was handful after handful of tarnished silver, with the occasional heart stopping flash of gold.

"Hey!" An angry voice shouted from above.

"Yeah, we want coin too!" 

That came from behind Maig and gooseflesh broke out despite the midday heat. They were going to tear the two of them apart for this haul.

Then from below. "The door! The door is opened! Here, boy, take the time of day, write down this notation. You, go take measurements and mark the seams!"

The door?

Dany turned and faced the gathering crowd. "There is plenty of coin for everyone." 

Maig felt her heart sink.

"Just walk through the door and down the ramp, I could only carry a handful of all the gold and silver down there."

What had she…? There was _more?_

Maig found herself squashed against the wall as all the bodies rushed past her in the hurry to gain riches. Freed from her burden, Dany now stood tall, regal looking as the minted silver faces in Maig's bag. The team from the Runic Guild made their way up and was now scrambling around her and Dany, marking with colored chalk and scribbling furiously on pieces of paper. At least they gave them more space than the Shallows folk had. 

“Damselle,” one of them started, he was sweating from the tips of his long grey mustachio and looked like he was about to burst his threadworn Guild uniform. He gripped Dany’s hand in an over eager handshake. “I am Professor Jules Compere, head of the Runic Guild, am I to understand you are visiting our fine city from the northern lands of the Empyre?”

“I have most recently travelled to the North of my own country,” Dany said, looking down at her still gripped and shaking hand, “but I don’t believe we ever called it an empire.”

“He’s asking you if that farce about the airship is true.” Maig interrupted, loudly, pleased when a sky colored glare turned her way. Dragon or no, that woman sure fit the description of a Northerner.

“I’m so sorry, Damselle, where are my manners?” The professor released the handshake. “Might I inquire your name?”

Just then the first of the cheering Shallows folk emerged from the tunnel, arms laden with as much or more coin than Maig herself had, some even carrying heavily jeweled blades and gold colored armor, not that anyone in the Shallows knew how to fight with anything longer than a knife…

"Daenerys Targaryen." 

“Targaryens…Targaryens...They are the... _saldrisé quipagros_.” This from a young apprentice leafing through a sheaf of papers. “The...this means ‘Dragoon riders’ does it not?” He showed a random sheet to a studious looking woman.

“Yes, that’s right, the Dragoon airships of the North...which makes the fire in the sky the flame cannons of... _drakkarese,_ no?"

“ _Zaldrīzes kipagīros,_ ” Dany- no, Daenerys corrected, ”and _dracarys._ Might I...might I see that sheet?”

“She can read the runes!” Professor Compere shouted excitedly. “This changes _everything!_ ”

The members of the Runic Guild closed in around Daenerys, and the Shallows folk, never ones to take a fancy word to heart, made it into one of their own.

“Sanc Drake!” The chant started. “Sanc Drake!” It kept on, swelling in voice and volume.

Maig’s stomach dropped. Her con had failed, and reassuring Cha wasn’t at her side to make everything alright again. She felt sick, and surrounded by all these people, she had never felt more alone.

 


	17. The Storytellers - Arya

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, massive delay, sorry, we had a five day conference in Toronto, and when we came back MrsMunky's brother had been evicted three weeks prior to his dissertation defense for his PhD (delays) and the uncle who had been living with us for the last two years died suddenly from complications after a slight construction injury. Oh, plus Grandpa got hospitalized and a cousin got hit by a car.
> 
> Add to that prep work for a hundred and thirty eight person combination fifth birthday party for LilMunky and ten years for me and the missus after my boss and Department Head left work for emergency triple bypass surgery, putting *me* in charge, and finding writing time became Slightly more difficult.
> 
> So September was Splendid....(please tell the universe to give me a better October and rest of Fall)
> 
> Hopefully we'll be back on track, but it might be a chapter every two weeks if they keep being nearly 4k instead of 2.6k words.
> 
> Enjoy!

**Ar-Yah**

Arya ripped the guts and spine out of another fish and set it on the woven tray beside them, ready for the evening pot. Since her imagined boon of building massive _bangkas_ hadn’t yet bore fruit, she was stuck earning her keep with much more mundane tasks. At least she was better at this than net tying. The knots themselves were fine, even with the strange leaf twine they used, it was keeping her place in the greater scheme of the net that always got to her. The holes were too large in some places to catch the prey they were designed for, and it made them useless. 

 “Tell me once more, Cousin, where is it that Wind-Speak goes?” Arya asked, using a blended pidgin of Valyrian and Wai-Tau words. They had been sailing for days out into open water, away from the distant peaks of land, and it made no sense at all.

“At the start and middle of each season we gather, to trade stories of the world and objects as well.”

“Why not just trade items at Day-Taunt?”

Less-Than gave Arya “the look,” which she bestowed every time she thought her student was being especially slow, which Arya _was,_ if she was being honest, since they had talked about trade a few times already and it hadn’t quite sunk in...yet.

“Because the idiot land dwellers don’t know the first thing about making quality goods, and the coin they pay with is worth less than a cracked shell chit out on the water.”

“Don’t they pay in silver?” Arya asked.

“Yes, and what do _you_ do with silver, Ar-Yah? Can you eat it? Does it make a good knife?”

“It can be made into mirrors...or jewelry.” Arya’s answers ran lame, but she couldn’t see the use in shell chits either, they were just chipped discs of snail shell threaded onto strings. She was about to suggest silverware when she realized she had only eaten with her hands since being pulled from the water. So...yes, in this case, useless. “Fine, silver is worthless when not trading with Day-Taunt.”

Less-Than’s stern look faded into a more pleasant one. If one could look pleasant while gutting dead fish…

 

* * *

 

Four days later Arya was truly convinced they were lost and sailing into nothing. They had two clan members that had apprenticed under Dragon-Sing, and they set up the talking gongs one evening, presumably to cry for help.

When not just one set answered back, but the ringing resonances of several dozen, and to a tune she couldn't recognize, Arya alerted all her senses for trouble. They had let her keep the Valyrian steel dagger, but that was the only weapon she had left. Knife fighting was a popular sport amongst the Wai-Tau divers, and though some were very skilled, they fought one on one, to first touch, and never practiced repelling large groups. A rare Fisher learned something akin to the Water Dance, but Fisher to Fisher disagreements rarely rose to raised voice shouting, much less armed combat. Fishers yelling at Divers, however, seemed to be a rite of passage as well as a daily activity. 

Their _bangka_ , as well as the other canoes of Wind-Speak’s flotilla, started crawling with activity: objects were moved, coiled ropes pulled from woven baskets, sails tied. The gongs continued, and their song drowned out the voices from the other canoes. Arya scanned the darkening horizon and prepared for...something. 

At first she couldn’t understand what she was seeing. Shadowy spears pierced up from the horizon line like a wall of advancing Unsullied, and just as numerous. Then, as they neared and the splashing of oars began, Arya could see people, people on canoes.The forest of spears were _masts._  

Someone threw a line across to the newcomers and the copied action rippled across Wind-Speak. There were splashes and laughter when some of them fell short of the mark, but many were caught and held. _Not foes, then._ Arya relaxed her senses from hair trigger to cocked and bolted. The boat jerked forward as the lines went taut, tugging the members of Wind-Speak against the larger flotilla until shouts warned of the impending collision. The oar bearers moved to the leading edge of the bamboo platform, shoving the blades of their paddles against the waiting canoes to slow them. 

There was a sharp creaking noise, and then the floor tilted down beneath Arya’s feet. She watched the outriggers and even the end of the massive canoe beneath them rise up out of the water and hold for a frozen, breathless moment before splashing back down amid cheers of success and Arya’s heartfelt sigh of relief.

So this was what a Wai-Tau gathering looked like. Music continued to play, the gongs shouting, from what little she could tell, everything from love ballads to a merchant hawking dried fish from the far northern ocean. Would that be Ironborn territory, or someplace else entirely? The uncertainty was...intriguing, and Arya decided upon the unknown. No Ironborn could sail this far, Euron’s Valyria raiding boasts or no, the Iron Fleet were coastal reavers and would never make it this far on open water.

Members of her own clan started to pack up items and store them in baskets or sling them over shoulders. Her eyes scanned for Less-Than out of habit, and she felt a smile quirk her lips when she noticed a dutiful Gull-Cry marching along behind her, his arms straining under a stack of baskets filled to bursting with patterned beadwork sashes. Less-Than had traded for the best quality bead she could find before commissioning Bead-Piper, the most respected bead weaver in Wind-Speak, to thread and weave them together on her backstrap loom. The result was...impressive, or at least, her clan members thought so. At night around the cookfire, many speculated on what riches she would bring back in trade. The beadwork had incredible value, and Less-Than could stretch value tight as a drum head.

In a bizarre bent of generosity, or perhaps on behalf of apprenticeship, which seemed more likely, she had given Arya two strings of the shell chits, with instructions to bargain the merchant half-hoarse before giving in and paying for something. The only bargaining Arya had ever done was saying the name of Jaqen H’ghar aloud, and that was more strength of will than dickering. If she wanted something, she paid the asking price, or she killed them and stole it, there wasn’t much middle ground. With nothing better to do, and nothing being asked of her, Arya followed after the teetering mound in Gull-Cry’s arm’s. 

Heads turned her way as Arya bobbed up and down with each newly boarded canoe. She was regretting her choice of tied off Westerosi underclothes instead of the traditional Wai-Tau garb. She had leaned towards additional coverage, thinking her skin would stand out more than the clothing, she had been wrong. Patterns of weave and color choices differed among the varied regional clans, but she was shocked to come across some cold water sailors with fur trim along their wraps and belts, their skin barely darker than her own.

She was saved from the endless stares when a set of gongs and drums cried out that a story was starting. Arya had almost lost sight of Less-Than and Gull-Cry, but they too were headed for the story telling group.

_"That was not much of anything, there are usually gongs, and dancers, and costumes, and rhyme."_

A large facemask towered over even Gull-Cry's burden, and Arya felt herself drawn toward it. Part of her felt silly for being pulled in by a simple mummer's show, but something about it felt...different. New life, new experiences, right? Maybe she could even steal a basket or two from Gull-Cry before he crushed someone…

 

* * *

 

Dancing orange torch flame shone from the beast's lethal canines, the flickers rising and falling, the darkness of the flame revealed an unearthly green glow emanating from the beast's eyes. 

"What _is_ that thing?" 

"It's one of Sky's Cat-People." Gull-Cry whispered, though his whisper was more of a yell directed towards her ear. The gongs were pretty, but they were nearly as loud as a melee. The drums too, but their rhythms worked into Arya's body, worming their way up until a finger or toe absently tapped out a mimicked pattern. She would stop them as she caught it, but by the grin on Gull-Cry's face she was getting less and less successful. On his other side, Less-Than sat, a reproachful look meant for both of them every time she turned from watching the show.

“I thought only Sea made People.” Arya whisper-yelled, which one had to, since the inside of Gull-Cry’s ears had burst a time or two while diving. She could never remember which side his hearing ear was on, but swore he kept changing which “good ear” he pointed at to keep people off balance.

 “When Sky ran from _Karak-Roh,_ it was not to run away in fear, no, it was to get help, since Sky cannot touch the unwilling in this realm, and _Karak-Roh_ is the most unwilling of all.”

 “What happened?” Arya asked. “If Sky had help, why didn’t _they_ save Sea?”

On the other side of Gull-Cry, Less-Than abruptly stood and left.

Gull-Cry ignored the outburst and nodded towards the stage instead. A long reddish tongue made of cloth rolled out from the mask, and the cat-beast licked an equally clever contrivance of a fur trimmed wrist strap, _had the fur come from the Northerners?_ , long metal nails capped each fingertip to become a clawed paw. The result was a clearly unruffled and uncooperative Cat-Person, performing total ignorance as a dancer dressed as Sky raged around it. The audience booed and hissed, some even shouting obscenities

 Ah, so _that_ was why the Wai-Tau had come to be. Making a people was of no use if they refused to obey you. 

“What is that one?”

 “The Wai-Tau are made from mice, these others, from cats.” At this he spat through the narrow gap between the bamboo slats, a common enough ward that needed little explanation.

Then another player entered, with mirrors for eyes that reflected back the bruised purpling of the dusk and hair made from some fiber white and shiny as new silver. The familiar sight made a shiver run through her.

"And those?" Arya asked, almost pointing with a trembling finger until she remembered herself, "Are those Cat-People as well?"

"The furless ones, yes," Gull-Cry said, his full attention towards the show and not at all on Arya, "those ones are less spiteful, but not to be trusted, they-" He looked at her and caught himself. "Did Less-Than not tell you about them?"

"No." Arya admitted, "She spoke of Sky running off, useless and afraid, with only Sea's cleverness to spare the world."

Gull-Cry snorted. "She _would_ , yes, Less-Than would tell it that way."

"What way?"

"She thinks it too strange, too...unplanned, that, since they are _puqun,_ nothing like that could happen on their side. She hates that Sky is so...bold, like a Diver, trying things even if they cannot work just to move forward, because to stop is to die. She is too much like Sea, she cannot burn with her passion only inside, she is always thinking, thinking, thinking instead."

That...was strangely poetic for Gull-Cry, but- "But it's part of the story!" 

After snippets of lost lore had been the only thing keeping her and every living creature from the brink of undeath, Arya had become a zealous collector of the myth kernels and half-truths that hid forgotten history.

"That is not what Less-Than thinks," Gull-Cry tsked, looking sidelong at the retreating Fisher, "and she is your mentor, not I."

"And what do _you_ think?"

"This, this is why I like you," an affectionate smack on her back made her cough and almost bowled Arya over, despite her sea legs and newly developed crouching muscles for her now chairless life, "You look _beneath_ the surface because you know more is below, like any good Diver."

Glares and a few spat tshhh's silenced Gull-Cry, Arya studiously concentrated on the storytellers and the dance, which wasn't hard, because she had never seen anyone move quite like that before. It was especially graceful considering that the floor, made up of six different canoes stripped down to bare bamboo and masts, rippled along with the surface of Sea, though for them, the stillness of land would be as foreign to them as Arya was to their dance.

One of the dancers opened their mouth and belched a cloud of fire. Arya was hard pressed to drown out the screams inside her head that burned with those flames.

_"Everyone out there is dead!"_

_No!_

_"Mama! Mama get up!"_

_No no no no-_

Gull-Cry's hissed anger parted the litany, but only for a moment. "Ar-Yah! Your tongue is wild, tame it or cut it out."

_Calm as still water._

_"We have to keep moving."_

_Stop! Don't!_

She couldn't save anyone, she could only save ashes, and in the end, wasn't that all any of them were worth? 

_Shut up!_

The gongs and drums faltered into stuttered silence. People were staring at her now, even the purple eyed mask turned her way. 

_“You’ll always be a threat to her, and I know a killer when I see one.”_

The smell of charred blood and entrails grew thick in her nostrils, her stomach twisted and she had to fight the retching.

_Fear cuts deeper than swords._

Arya raised her head, forcing her chin up by minute fractions until she met the bright eyes of the mask. She stared down the unblinking violet gaze until the face blurred, just slightly, and she could see herself reflected back with the same queer feeling she got every time she held a looking glass. 

No One turned Arya had ended a dynasty of her own with borrowed faces and pastry crust, killed without remorse or penance, and not a soul had asked her to save the world from the forces of eternal death and darkness. She had not been raised an orphaned ward in secrecy, always terrified of a sudden noise in the night or an unexpected gift in the daylight. She was an orphan now, of course, and she had lost most of her siblings to death, both real and imagined, but to lose _everything?_ To be transformed by others into an empress and denied empire?

The mask shifted back into focus, but the dazzling twilight eyes no longer felt accusing, instead Arya felt...something new, and strange as well. Kinship? Recognition? Neither fit just right.

“Please,” Arya said, strangling a bit on the Wai-Tau syllables spilling from her mouth, “I would...I would like to know the story.”

A slight nod to Arya, and then another to the musicians as the staccato beat picked up again and invited the gongs' deep bronze voices to sing along. The suspicious eyes of the crowd slid off her and back towards the performers. The mummers began again, and, thankfully, the mirror eyed blonde spat no more fire. Arya took a breath, feeling the band of iron panic that had been crushing her crack and slough, crumbling into so much rust. 

Gull-Cry cast slight glances her way that failed miserably at stealth, but he didn’t say anything, so neither did Arya, instead she focused all her intent on the players. There was a story that went with the fire, something about armor and the elements that was just outside of her understanding. She would ask Gull-Cry for clarification about it, later, when they were alone and far from anyone she had disturbed or angered.

The tempo changed and the masked cast members stood together, removing their guises and proffering them to the lambent moon, just now rising up from the waterline.

The cat was a tall lithe-

Diver? No...they were dressed wrong, but they were not presenting as a Fisher either, the body was broad shouldered and brawny, which would have been male by Westerosi standards, but that didn’t mean anything here.

The other performers were the same, a strange alloy of identities and characteristics.

The would be Targaryen was small and slight, but not frail, they stood with a deeply rooted strength that felt impassable. Their dress was the same, neither one nor the other, and the body curvaceous, but the most striking part about them was the eyes. Freed from the mask's mirror gaze, the actor seemed to stare right into the deep recesses of Arya's soul. She looked back and startled, those eyes, penetrating as they seemed, were the waxen white of the blind.

 _Dragon-Sing._ Something echoed in her mind.

They must have been members of Dragon-Sing. Less-Than had said that if Arya were younger, and spoke less like a confused infant, that her in-between characteristics would send her to Dragon-Sing, where she would learn to speak the voice of the talking gongs and tell all the stories of the world.

There was a word for what they were, neither he nor she but _sida_ , an untranslatable word that meant not one or the other but both.

 _Sida_ walked forward a step, one arm precisely extended in Arya's direction, a formal greeting that violated the usual taboo of gesturing at someone.

"Go!" Gull-Cry hissed, it was much quieter than his usual "whispers." "You must go!"

All eyes turned on her and Arya knew the consequences of her next move would be severe, right or wrong. Arya touched her fingertips to her lips, where the sacred breath of life came from, then reached her own arm out. She wasn't a _total_ savage, Less-Than had taught her many things, formal greetings among them.

 _Sida_ nodded, and Arya mimicked the motion before approaching. She kept her head bowed and eyes downcast towards the bamboo at her feet, this kept her from falling in the gaps between the canoe decks or stepping on the owner of one of the many awed or judgemental faces turned in her direction.

The Dragon-Sing storyteller delicately tilted _ia_ chin and gestured towards an ornately draped structure lashed to an outrigger deck. _Sida_ pressed _ia_ lips into a pout as invitation, the movement casual but studied. It was _exceptionally_ well studied, and Arya felt her pulse arc upwards in helpless response as she walked towards the tented structure.

Constellations chased across the wall tops in what must have been thousands of silver-white beads, below those were the figures of stories, mostly hidden by the dark of Sky calling the real stars out to dance and play.

Could _sida_ see? Were the white eyes just to fool her?

Arya entered first, a sign of trust, and was thrust into absolute darkness as the heavy curtain slid shut behind her. She stepped forward and her foot caught, tilting her precariously as her arms windmilled. She almost fell, only a youth of harsh trials kept her upright and barely. So, no farce, only the blind could manage a space like this.

The beaded curtain opened again and Arya could see the faint purpling navy of a sundown sky outlining her host. That scant bit of light vanished with the shushing of hundreds of beads running against one another, leaving both of them in darkness.

"I am named Night-Blessed." _Sida_ reached out and unerringly laid _ia_ palm across Arya's heart, it stuttered at the touch and then beat double time. Whether this was from her fighting instincts or...something else...Arya didn't know.

Definitely blind then, and an unlucky name at that. Wai-Tau names focused on the light in the darkness. Even Dark-Dive was so named because he would meet _Karak-Roh_ sooner rather than later.

"Your clanmate from across the waters lives, and she is here." _I_ _a_ palm felt hot, even through the thick cloth of Westerosi underclothes.

That was impossible, no matter who it was. "Deepest apologies, mighty Singer, this one has poor knowledge of Sea's tongue, I do not understand your words."

"Your heart understands," _si_ _a_ pressed, "convince your head."

"Not one in my family, my _clan_ , knows where I am. Even I do not know, how could she?"

"Something older, something wiser has brought her here, a _puqun_ of Fire."

A chill ran through her as the darkness went from comforting to oppressive. Dark as if she stood under the shadow of wings, wings of a black scaled dragon that was the darkest of them all.

"She's dead, Jon _stabbed_ her, it's _over!_ I sailed west and the dragon flew _east_!" 

A bright blue glow filled the tent, emanating from a slim blue vial. Night-Blessed held it before _ia_ like a torch, but only Arya's eyes were drawn to it, only she was comforted by this light in the darkness. She turned her mind away from the glowing blue orbs burned into her mind. Those eyes she _had_ closed forever.

 _Sida_ continued, unruffled by the outburst. "The stranger is descended from one of Sky's people, but she is...different. She is from your world, it is you who must stop her."

"Stop her? Where? There is none but the Wai-Tau upon Sea." Unless she had made land...

"Your mentor will take you to the Shattered Islands. There you will see, and you will learn."

"And then? Kill her? I'm very good at that these days, but _only_ that and nothing else."

"Sea cradles me while Sky whispers the songs of the world into my ears. Your hands are red enough to drip, Ar-Yah Star of the Cold Water Mongrels."

She should have known better, change was an unattainable farce. Arya looked down at her hands, blue in this light, but red in all others. She muttered in Westerosi, "Fine, what's one more death staining my hands? One more gift to pay the Many Faced God."

" _Se mēre hen naenie laehurlion_ holds no sway here."

Was that Valyrian? And "the one of many faces," no less.

Arya looked up in shock, the Game of Faces had been slipping from her, even against a blind opponent, but she had been striving for honesty these days, with others and herself as well.

"It is harder to stay a hand than to take with it. Do you agree?"

"I…" Was waiting for your rightful vengeance the same as staying your hand?

"Harder still to forgive, and to live."

"Wait, you order me to stop this person by doing _nothing_?"

"Did I say 'nothing'?" The storyteller queried. Then, before she could answer. "We are finished here, go to your worried Diver and soothe him, then assure your mentor that no offense was given tonight."

"And then?"

"And then you sleep, and think on your task, truth flows within you, even if the gourd rings empty."

The blue light dimmed and winked out. In the total black that followed, no guidance was given. Arya stumbled her way to the beads, guided by the faint shushing of glass. Her hands parted the heavy barrier and the twinkling starlight outside felt bright and friendly as a cookfire.

Ar-Yah Star of the Cold Water Mongrels looked up, tracing the newly learned constellations that covered Sky's back like tapped ink. This was her life now, and no one, not the spectre of the Night King or a risen Targaryen Empress, was going to take it from her.


	18. Sanc Drake

**Dany**

Dany was inside a shattered, pieced together patchwork of a ship.  _ Half _ a ship, anyway. When they had arrived, it looked as though the prow of a merchant ship had just burst through the earth below. It had not, but it seemed wood was that scarce here, if the woven replacements at the Holdfast were any indication. Nothing went to waste, not even the shipwrecks.  

“Damselle?” Maman, who was also known as Damselle Lana to anyone but her daughter, held out an unfamiliar glass jar.

"Would you care for some tea...Damselle? Or is it Sanc now?"

They had been shouting her name in the streets, 'Sanc Drake!' They cried. 'She smiles and the streets flow with gold! Sanc Drake will save us!' Of course it was wrong, and very much  _ not _ her name, but it was preferable to being a hunted fugitive, so she would allow it.

"Between just the two of us, Damselle is fine," Dany said, her gaze fixed on the strange mixture inside the glass. "...tea...would be lovely, thank you." The contents looked more akin to candied fruit than tea. Was the translation off? Were there even herbs in that jar?

"It's no trouble at all," Damselle Lana replied, eyes dark as a Northern midnight gave her a measured glance, "I was just  _ so _ pleased when little Maig said you were coming to stay with us."

'Little Maig' had done nothing of the sort, and had argued vehemently against the matter when she thought Dany was out of earshot. Dany  _ had _ been that far, damn the flightwinds and her hearing, but the two argued so vociferously with their hands and postures when not making a performance of it that no words were necessary. Maig being sent to the market to pick up goods that already lined some of the kitchen shelves clinched the guess into fact.

Damselle Lana cut a spoon bladed swath through the jiggling golden mass before scooping out a relatively large, guest sized serving. She tipped the whole thing into a delicate looking bowl and it splatted to the bottom with a sort of wet sloshing noise more commonly heard in pleasure houses. Before Dany could question this, Damselle Lana set a second spoon in front of her before digging out a slightly smaller scoop for her own bowl. She turned to the marvel known as a "stove," it was a tiny, stone lined hearth with a deep bowl of metal on top and a latched door on the side. It radiated  _ some _ heat, but not nearly as much as an open fire would have.

A steel kettle had been heating water on the stove and her host retrieved it. Wrapping cloth around the handle, she carefully closed her hand around it and lifted, walking over to the table and streaming water into the two bowls. A brilliant aroma rose up from the bowl, light as the air it misted into. It tickled Dany's senses in a scarce but familiar delight she could not quite place.

Damselle Lana stirred the “tea” inside her own bowl until it dissolved, leaving bits of what looked like fruit floating about in the churning liquid. Dany mimicked the motion with her own spoon, watching in surprise as the viscous concoction vanished, leaving the water with a faint golden hue. The steam rose up as an open blossom, and Dany fell into its petals willingly. 

Wait, there was protocol, wasn’t there? Damselle Lana cupped her hands around the bowl and Dany copied her, lifting the now heavy crockery towards her lips. Scents engulfed her, scents of better times and lighter loads and then she was drinking from the rim of the bowl, the molten sweet orange-lemon infusion coating her mouth and throat as it warmed her inside. Tendrils of simple pleasure twined through her, soothing like nothing else had since before the Red Wastes.

“That’s-”

“Hot! Far too hot, I’m  _ so _ sorry.” Damselle Lana blew fiercely across the surface of her tea. She set her bowl down, reaching across to take her guest’s, but Dany was already midway through her third swallow. Unable to speak and defend herself, she finished the action, watching Maig’s mother stare openly at her bobbing throat over the rim of her tea bowl.

That...would need some kind of explanation, and now would be an excellent time for swearing.

Except Dany was terrible at it.

“The...flavors were  _ most _ interesting, and where did the sweetness come from, honey?”

Dark eyes narrowed. “The only honey in Détente comes from those thieving liars running the Holdfast.”

The Holdfast! It was a sore point for Maig, and she  _ must _ have learned it from somewhere…

Dany put on her most ignorant polite society voice, the one ingratiating courtiers always used when they were trying to wheedle favors. She tried to make it even sweeter than the tea. “It is  _ sweet _ as honey is, I can’t imagine anything else could taste like that, certainly not just fruit on its own.”

Damselle Lana looked torn as fortuitous blackmail struggled against a throttling moral superiority. Dany held a blank, hopeful smile, enameled all over with pristine innocence.

_ Patience... _   
A divided foe was a conquered one.

“It’s boiled cane syrup.” Damselle Lana said, nearly spitting out the words into her now cooling tea. “Sweet cane from the islands outside of Détente, the islands where the  _ real _ people live and struggle.”

“And the Holdants?”  _ Eyes wide, brow relaxed.  _ “Do they not struggle? I have seen the Rafters, they seem  _ quite _ industri-”

“The Rafters are all idiots, and you as well if you think they’re not.”

“Oh?” Dany raised the bowl and sipped. The liquid was now cool as any of the other teas she had consumed, and felt chilly against the luxurious warmth of her first mouthful.

Damselle Lana’s own tea was forgotten, and her fingers gripped the thick tabletop.  _ Was that actual wood?  _

“They’re raised in stolen opulence, taught from books instead of the real world, and then given any and every ridiculous thing they can imagine, all in exchange for the foolish love of a beaten down mongrel!”

"Stolen?" Dany queried, and regretted it, as Damselle Lana's tirade shuttered, leaving a pleasant and concerned host in its wake.

"Why Damselle, of course they stole it." Her broad smile was patronizing at best, and leaned more toward mockery. "Where did you think all that gold came from?"

Dany's mind raced. The cavern  _ had _ been attached to the Holdfast, but the  _ runes! _ The runes had been in Valyrian, the language of her ancestors, it was her own true tongue, and yet…

There were no Valyrians here, no fluent speakers, no lost ancestors. The closest she had found was the Runic Guild, and they were so inept at reading that they might have been Tyrion's tutor.

_ Tyrion… _

Did he still live? What would he think of her now?

_ If I look back, I am lost. _

The guild was foolish, yes, but they loved her. Her teachings made the old magic of Détente work once more. They would protect her, were even now erecting a home for her with all the wood their riches could buy. Except if Damselle Lana was correct, those same riches had been their right to begin with.

“Please explain.” Dany said, discarding the innocent courtier in favor of...whatever she was these days…

“Did no one tell you of the Tithe? It is  _ quite _ the scheme, and if you know anything at all about my daughter, you know we’re both  _ very _ fond of those.”

_ “Will you come with me from this place, Dany who falls from the backs of sky dragons?” _

Whose  _ cyvasse  _ piece was she in this game? 

“How much?” Dany asked. “How much do they take?”

“ _ Half _ of all income.” Her tone was ominous.

Was this a light tax or a crippling one? How much had the Usurpers taxed her own birthright? How much would  _ she _ have taxed them? Tyrion had handled the numbers, he would have known in an instant, but Dany didn’t even know where to start. She was an expert in manners and statecraft, but finance? There was an endless span of ignorance when it came to coin, and the shock of it tore at her. 

“And do what with it all?” She would not confess her own ignorance.

“Print books full of lies!” Damselle Lana spoke loudly now, her voice rising to the edge of zealotry. “Take paying jobs from the townspeople and gift them to the  _ lowliest _ of their rejects. They take and take and leave us with  _ nothing _ , until we’re willing to knife one another over even a chance at their leavings.”

Why was she telling her this?

“What are you planning to do about them?” Finance was a sore point, but court intrigue? She could smell a plot in the most innocuous of corners.

“I’m planning to burn them out root and stone, dear  _ Damselle,  _ and  _ you _ are going to help me.”

"You seem oddly sure of your persuasion when we’ve only just met.” Dany quipped, pushing her chair back to stand. “I am your  _ guest _ , nothing more, the People-”

“The  _ People _ will string you up the very same moment I tell them what I know.”

So the blackmail  _ hadn’t _ been forgotten...

The door opened, saving Dany from answering  _ that _ particularly barbed volley, and Maig walked in, her arms bulging with loaves. 

“The grain cart will be here shortly, Maman,” she sounded a bit out of breath, “I went to both the bakers and the mill.”

“And how much did you pay?” Damselle Lana asked, ignoring Dany as if she were no more than her chair.

“One silver for every loaf, and a gold piece for a sack of grain, just the way you wanted.”

A gold piece for  _ grain?  _ That was outrageous, it was-

“Did you leave anything behind?”

“No Maman, I cleared the shelves and the stocks, and bought the cart as well.” Maig toddered over to the table and dropped her load of loaves atop it before pulling an additional six from the sack strapped across her shoulders. “Delivery should be before fifth chime.”

“Excellent work, child, the city has neglected a boon, and lost greatly because of it.”

“Yes, Maman.” In a bizarre display of physical affection, Maig walked over to her mother and hugged her, resting a head against embroidery clad ribs as Damselle Lana ruffled the unruly dark hair with her fingers.

Something was wrong, something was  _ very _ wrong, and Dany couldn’t see the map of this realm well enough to find the issue. Bread and grain. Bread...and  _ grain? _ Why? Why would they need all of it? And why at such exorbitant prices? It was the very basest of supplies this incredible culinary city had to offer, and if the table and house were any indication, Damselle Lana  _ clearly _ had the money to eat whatever she chose.

But there were those who would defend the staple with their lives…

_ Her lines advanced, Dothraki screamers racing forward and flanking the formations, smashing through the outer defenses as if they were no more than paper. _

_ "Dracarys," and the supply train exploded, bursting forth in a cloud of smoke and the ashes of food and men alike. _

_ Then she was struck, falling with her child from an arrow shot by no normal bow, vulnerable but not defenseless, as the Kingslayer soon discovered. _

_ “I'm not here to murder. All I want to destroy is the wheel that has rolled over everyone both rich and poor, to the benefit of no one but the Cersei Lannisters of the world.” _

She would have spared them, but they had tested her mettle instead, and Daenerys Targaryen was true forged as any Valyrian steel blade.

Men died for grain as easily as they died for honor, that gave it power, and now Damselle Lana had it in sheaves. She had overlooked the obvious. 

_ Tyrion would be so disappointed. _

With enough of the stuff you could starve out a besieged army or field your own, but there was no castle to take, no ranks of walking bellies to feed. So what  _ was _ their game?

Damselle Lana handed her daughter a fluttering stack of colored paper. 

"Here, these are the fiat notes the Noble Families use, you're going to need them."

"Nobles! But Maman," Maig protested, the first act of rebellion she had seen, "the Families are near as bad as the Holdfast, why not chits?"

"Chits? That filthy money is only suitable for fishmongers and dock whores." Damselle Lana waved a dismissive hand and left a red faced Maig fuming before turning back to her captive "guest." What they were talking about, Dany could only guess at. Gold was gold and silver was silver, wasn't it?

There was a knock on the door. "That's the delivery," Maig blurted.

"See to it," Damselle instructed her daughter.

Chimes sounded from an enormous tower somewhere, bells in the morning and chimes for the evening. She counted them: one, two, three-

Four...

"Where is your army?" Dany pressed after the fifth note faded from its citywide echo. She did her best to sound imperial, despite being at a total loss.

"Nowhere...yet." Damselle Lana smiled. "But you're going to lead them."

What secrets still lay hidden? "You speak boldly of fanciful dreams."

"Says the false Sanc," the woman continued, "do you hear the cries yet, Damselle?"

_ Every night in my dreams. _ She almost said, but she couldn't know the trials Dany had faced, this was something else, something-

Faint shouting filtered in through the glass, it was angry, and Dany could barely make out the words.

"They've figured it out." Damselle said.

Dany smiled. "They're coming for  _ you, _ and far be it from Sanc Drake to stand in their way."

Damselle Lana didn't even flinch, she just stood there, looking self assured as a well fed cat.

"They're coming," Damselle said, "and you're going to meet them."

"If you think I'm doing one thrice damned thing that comes out of your mouth you are going to be  _ sorely  _ disappointed,  _ Damselle." _

"Oh you'll do it, and you'll smile," she said, "because the alternative is to have them rip you apart, magically infused limb by limb until you're no longer a threat."

Maig sidled up and took Dany's hand. "Sorry." She muttered.

"Dear Maig, won't you please show our guest to a dressing room, Sanc Drake needs to show her face to the crowd and give bread to the poor and starving."

Dany allowed herself to be led away, but turned to her captor for one last volley.

"And if I am asked, who stole the grain, if not Damselle Lana?"

"Why the Holdfast, of course," said Damselle Lana the master thief, "who else could possibly have needed it all?"

Maig tugged her toward the costume trunks in the back and Dany followed, her life once more reduced to choices of bad, or worse.


	19. Arya

**Arya**

The first thing she noticed about the city of Day-Taunt was the smell. It loomed up and hit her almost as hard as the Dragon-Lash had aboard _Seawolf._ Rotting seaweed and fish carcass mingled with the pungent aroma of shit, along with an acrid sourness that must have been from the people themselves. Had she ever smelled that terrible?

Less-Than only grinned at her discomfort. “The stink is always this bad, you will learn to prepare.”

“What do we trade for, Cousin?” Arya asked, trying not to gag as the smell increased. “There must be other ports, other clans with metal?”

“They are the closest and, their filth aside, some are descendents who have abandoned Sea.” She looked out across the water, as if sight alone could retrieve something. “We would welcome them all back...if they chose it.”

As Arya had been welcomed. Welcomed and taught until she understood the ways to live within the world instead of always fighting against it. Welcomed in a way Westeros had never done for her, for her, and for Daenerys Targaryen, the exiled babe who lived in secrecy for half her life and returned to claim her birthright, only-

Water splashed up on the port side and Arya went to look, glad for the distraction. A Diver popped up, one of the younger ones whose name always escaped her, Salt-Crossed, Wave-Wander?...it must have been one of those. He burst up with a rusted clot of metal in his hand. Rust meant iron, and iron would make a good dive knife, with the right patience, maybe even his first. He climbed aboard their canoe, streams of greasy water sheeted off him and through the slats of their deck, leaving behind a few black streaks on his skin.

The water here was absolutely filthy, and getting murkier by the candlemark. She noticed only the young, foolhardy Divers swam in it. Gull-Cry and a few other Divers stood back and watched, shaking their heads and wincing every time one of the children broke the tainted surface. Even the waters of Ragman's Harbor were better than this. Shit and piss and dead animals, sometimes dead men as well...certainly, but what made it change color like this?

Footsteps approached, it was Gull-Cry. 

"Fool pup," he spoke to the still dripping Salt-Wander, or whoever he was. The kid looked crestfallen despite his chunk of metal, "now you will stink as bad as Day-Taunt."

He leaned in and whispered something, the child immediately brightened and hurried off to join the group of novice Divers, who chattered with the excitement of the envious.

"What did you say to him?" Arya asked.

"I told him the truth all Divers know," Gull-Cry said, "great knives can come from bad beginnings, Divers too." He grinned at his own cleverness before ducking a swipe from Less-Than. "Ar-Yah," he continued, unruffled, "will you help me carry dear Cousin Less-Than's things to Market?"

" _You_ are carrying my things?"

Gull-Cry stood prouder than ever. "Wind-Sing speaks, I follow." He winked at Arya. "Gull-Cry and Ar-Yah were _very_ good at Great Market, Wind-Sing says to be very good again. What say you, Cousin Ar-Yah?"

Less-Than's beadwork had sold extremely well, in exchange she had gotten basket after basket of treasures in return, half of which Arya could barely identify, but seemed to sell well enough on land.

Less-Than sighed, aggrieved. "I am not one to quarrel with Wind-Sing. You may escort my goods to market, noble _Cousin_."

Gull-Cry grinned so wide Arya thought his cheeks would split. Then turned toward the baskets as the paddlers shouted of approaching land.

Less-Than lowered her voice. "Ar-Yah, follow after him, make sure he doesn't damage anything."

"Yes, Cousin." Arya said, and prepared herself for setting foot on this unknown land.

 

* * *

 

Their market “stall” was more a sprawl than stall, and at the very edges of the open air market, but it granted Arya a view of Day-Taunt proper, and what kind of people might choose to live inside of it. Closest was the stall that roasted skewered meat, seasoned with a blend of spices that greatly departed from the food served by Wind-Speak but tantalized her all the same.

A woman with dark hair and darker eyes pulled a boy along with her. He was her exact copy in miniature, but where her face was hard, his was wide eyed with wonder. A much loved and wrinkled thumb popped in and out of his mouth as he looked at the sights and sounds of the market. The pair walked up to the meat stall.

“Two please.”

Her accent was odd, and not like anything Arya had encountered on Essos or among Wind-Speak. The phrase took a little adjusting to understand, but the recognizable words were still buried underneath.

“You got _chits,_ Damselle? Cuz I _know_ you haven’t seen a fiat note in your life, and them’s the best you can do.”

“Chits? Maxime, no, why would anyone carry chits off the water? Here’s a quarter silver, same as always.”

“You must not’ve heard then.” The shopkeeper said, unmoving. “Bread’s a _whole_ silver a loaf and a gold piece for a sack of grain. I gotta keep up when silver ain’t even worth a meal.”

“Gold? For _grain?_ You've gone mad, Lordson, Sanc Clara forgive you and your culinary robbery. I’ll pay a quarter silver and no more.”

“It’s a string of chits or a half fiat, and that’s me being generous.”

It actually wasn’t, and Arya could think of a half dozen things she could purchase with a whole string of chits, and worth much more than two portions of meat on a stick, however tantalizing.

“I told you! I don’t have those!” The mother sounded panicked, and the boy started to wail then, fat tears dripping down his cheeks, down to a chin that was about to run with spittle.

Arya looked back at her mentor, Less-Than was fully engrossed in driving her price up despite the customer’s best efforts to stop her. She wouldn’t notice if Arya stepped out, and it would only be for a moment.

She walked the few paces over to the shopkeeper, her infrequently used boots felt tight around her newly roughened feet, but she ignored it like any other discomfort during an assignment. “Excuse me, ma’am?”

The woman didn't respond at first. There...there had been another word the shopkeeper had used, what was it? “Amsel?” That was closer and got the woman's attention. “I think I can be of service to you.”

The woman’s expression softened slightly until they locked eyes, then one look at the color and Arya was cut off completely. 

“I think you and your filthy water trash can go back to the boat you sailed in on.” The woman huffed, pulling her boy behind her.

The boy, at least, had stopped crying and peeked out from his mother’s skirts with an expression of delight and interest, as if Arya were a puppy or a favored plaything.

She pointedly turned away from the woman and towards the shopkeeper. "Two, you said? For a whole string of chits?"

"Or a half fiat." He suggested, as if chits were sullied now that an actual child of Sea had arrived.

"Make it three and I'll give you a whole string,” Arya said casually, “it's probably the most business you'll have all day."

“I think you should move along, _Fish-Man.”_ He pointedly crossed his arms and made no move to take her chits or pull out a meat skewer.

This, this right here is why she had never tried to be friendly in her short but pain filled life. She had tried to do the right thing, and here she was with two newly forged enemies, still hot with anger and cherry red as Gendry’s forge hearth.

“Fine,” she muttered, turning away, “then let your boy starve, it’s no business of mine.”

She walked back towards the open air stall where Less-Than was still haggling and met Gull-Cry’s eyes. He didn’t speak a word of Day-Taunt but the Diver could read her face well enough...she really was slipping these days. 

Arya stood next to him and watched over her mentor’s goods. He clapped a thickly tendoned hand on her shoulder and she rocked slightly from the force of it. The motion shook some of the melancholy from her, not all, but at least something..

“We are scum and flotsam here, Ar-Yah, it does not matter that we were here first, and chosen by Sea, no, they only see our eyes, Sea's gift to us,  and that is all we can ever be.”

It was stupid, but no different than her childhood had been. Arya Horse-Face, Arya Underfoot, Arya who wanted to be Lord of a Manor and never the lady wife of one. Unseemly Arya who could shoot a bow as well as her brothers, but who was banned from learning the sword, so her father had hired a "dancing master" instead. This world, with the same blind traditions that her own had carried, was stupid. She had lived another way, and she was glad for it, but she hadn't fully settled in that world either, had she?

_"I think that is your decision to make, but that you will have to make it, eventually.”_

"Is your head wild, Ar-Yah? Less-Than is busy, I will tame it for you." Gull-Cry grinned and wound up to smack her in a pantomime of a Fisher.

Arya found herself smiling at that as she pushed the Diver's arm away. "No, Cousin, that will not be necessary, you have tamed it well enough already."

 _These_ were her people now, and they worked to understand her instead of shunning every little thing that challenged them.

A bell rang in a tower somewhere, probably striking a candlemark. When it didn't stop and seemed to be getting louder as it came towards them, people began to react.

Some panicked and tried to find cover while others craned their necks, trying to look for the source of the clamor. Arya did her best to remain calm, she had a job to do and neither Less-Than nor Gull-Cry nor any of the other vendors behaved as if anything were amiss.

Their customers were not as steadfast, however, and one by one they drifted away in favor of the clamouring of the bells.

"Does this always happen?" Arya asked Less-Than.

"Not every time, but sometimes there are festivals we do not know of." She took a long look at the gathering crowd and her brow furrowed. "I had thought this was one of them, but perhaps not."

"Perhaps not" was enough to make Arya crane her own neck up from her uselessly short stature to try and see what all the commotion was about.

Her curiosity was sated when a woman stood upon the driver's seat of what looked to be a grain cart, and it took her breath away.

Standing there, a loaf of bread in each hand and speaking to the gathered crowd at her feet, was the Mad Empress Daenerys Targaryen.

 

* * *

 

This wasn't real, she was asleep, dreaming on the deck of a canoe while Fishers prepared the meal and Divers shook the platform's edge just so before leaping off into Sea.

But no, that was definitely the voice of the Targaryen Empress. 

Gull-Cry tossed his head towards the cart and pouted his lips to indicate Daenerys. "What does she say?" 

“She is giving bread to those that have none, something happened to their money today, the silver they trade with is worthless now.” There was no accent to parse out from this speech. Daenerys had bread, and she was giving it to the people, who seemed to be starving as much as the woman at the meat stall, starving and somehow newly poor. Could Daenerys have been involved in that? The woman had a keen mind for scheming, certainly, but economics? 

Here Arya was, on the other side of the damned world, running into the exact same problem she had back in Westeros. Daenerys had power, and she was clearly using it to woo these people to her cause, whatever it might be. And if Dany was successful, what then? 

Arya fingered the Valyrian steel dagger at her side. Jon had ended her reign once, could Arya do it again?

_"It is harder to stay a hand than to take with it. Do you agree?"_

Night-Blessed had known this moment was coming, had in fact sent her to market to stand exactly where she was now and...show mercy to a Mad Targaryen?

_"Harder still to forgive, and to live."_

 But could she forgive this woman after everything that had happened in King’s Landing?

“Sanc Drake!” The common people started to chant, and it caught like fire to dry tinder.

“What do they say?’ Gull-Cry asked.

“I don’t know.” Arya answered, honestly. “Drake” sounded a bit like the Valyrian word for dragonfire, but she hadn’t seen the large black bulk of the dragon anywhere on land or over the water as they sailed in, and the creatures were renowned for their voracious appetites, especially when it came to porpoises. 

And what was a “sanc?”

People were raising their children up now for a bit of bread or to touch their savior. Her hair was shorter now, nearly as short as a shaven headed penitent, but the silver-white strands still glinted in the fading rays of the sun.

Daenerys handed out loaf after loaf until the cart stores were empty.

It was then that the voices changed from awed to angry, and the jostling crowd started shoving one another for a chance to look into the cart and see what she was holding back.

In short, it was the start of a riot.

In a matter of seconds, Daenerys was buried under a seething mass of people and Arya didn’t have much time to consider morals, she just started to react.

“Gull-Cry! Help Less-Than get her things back to the _bangka_ , this is only the beginning.”

He took a moment to finger his own dagger, torn between wanting to stay here and help or leave her alone to do...whatever Arya thought it was that she was going to do.

“Go!” Arya shouted at him, and he nodded, spurred into action as he stacked woven baskets atop one another and yelled at Less-Than to do the same.

Okay, that was taken care of, now on to Daenerys….

Right.

She looked at her surroundings, trying to find a perch of some kind. She could never force her way through that crowd without killing half of those she met. Arya looked back towards the meat stall and let a full grin break out once she noticed the sturdy canopy atop it.

This was either going to be brilliant, or shatter her leg. Either way, she wouldn’t need to kill anyone but herself...at least for now…

Arya ran the short distance over and shimmied up the corner support pole, doing her best despite errant whacks from the angry meat vendor. Once she was high enough she gripped the woven cloth that hung over the top and pulled herself onto it, settling her full weight. Arya winced while she waited for her stupidity to outweigh luck.

It held.

For once in her life, being small was a good thing.

She rose up from the crouch and started running again, chasing a loop around the crowd until the last three stalls veered inward and then it was time for the final trial. Arya leapt and hoped the sturdy cloth would hold her and spring back instead of tearing right through. It sagged dangerously at first and then she was flying, sailing past the first six rows of people before losing most of her height and crashing bodily into the front ranks of the bread riot. 

An elbow hit her in the head and she had to fight to keep from going down, going to the floor meant death, and what do we say to that Lord?

Not. 

She elbowed her own way forward, stomping toes and kicking shins where she could until she reached out and felt the latticed bamboo of the grain cart under her hands.

Today.

If this were Essos or Westeros she would have had trouble climbing, but this was Day-Taunt, and they used the same building materials Wind-Speak did. Every shaft of bamboo was a hand or foot hold, and this cart was cheap and full of gaps. Arya levered herself up and over the side of the cart and dropped down inside, regretting it instantly.

She had climbed the side of the grain storage section, and all the grain was gone. She plummeted the full height she had just climbed before Arya hit the bottom with a grunt. This was immediately followed by a series of kicks aimed at her back and spine.

“Get away from me!” A familiar voice shouted at her, shrill with fear.

She had found her, at least. Arya counted the rhythm of the kicks, took a few more, and then spun around and caught the Targaryen’s foot before unceremoniously dumping the dragonrider on her ass in the dirty cart bottom. 

“Now Daenerys, is that any way to greet an old friend?”

The woman turned on her in a rage, ready to continue her assault on the ground. "Who do you- _Arya_?"

This was bad as any mummer's farce, and Arya would have started laughing if a menacing face hadn't peeked over the rim of the grain storage followed by too brawny shoulders and what looked to be a _very_ large and angry man.

Arya tilted her face up towards their assailant, "Shall we?"

Dany stood and stretched a hand out to Arya, still on the floor. "That depends," she said, hauling Arya upright, "do you have any weapons with you?"

"Only one," Arya admitted, "and I'm supposed to go easy on the bloodletting."

" _You?_ The _Faceless Man, you're_ staying your blade now?" Dany asked, the disbelief was palpable.

Arya just grinned, "New world, new life, right?"

"Right," Dany said, looking upward. 

Then the cart shook, and then three people stood on the floor of the grain storage.

The man yelled, and they charged at him.

Arya sure hoped that knight of hers had taught Dany a thing or two about fighting...


	20. Appendix

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> An appendix for anyone having issues following along

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This will be edited and added to as names come up in the narrative.
> 
> [Brackets indicate the DECEASED]

**Wai-Tau**

**_Wind-Speak_ **

_Fishers_

**Wind-Sing** Head of Wind-Speak

**Less-Than**

**Bead-Piper**

 

_Divers_

**Dark-Dive**

**Fish-Swim**  

**Gull-Cry**

 

**The Shallows**

**_Residents_ **

**Lana  -** Maig’s mother

 

**_Minnows_ **

**Charo**  

 **Maig**  

 

**Holdfast**

**_Elders_ **

**Medi** \- Logic Instructor

 **Varin** \- Chief Physicker and Medical Instructor

 

**_Holdants_ **

**Bruno** \- Dock Guard and Garden Tender

 **Caro** \- Dock Guard and Fencing Instructor

 **[Basile]** \- Dock Guard

 **Jerar** \- Rafter

 **Fil -** Rafter

 **[Alain]** \- Rafter

 

**_Adoptees_ **

**Keen-Eye Matchio Holdfast -** orphan of Wai-Tau descent, age 16

 **Mouse-Foot Matchio Holdfast -** orphan of Wai-Tau descent, age 20

 

**_District Specific/Guilds_ **

**Steelmoor -** deals in defense and incarceration, trains the citywide policing force known as Peacekeepers

 

**Nox Insomnis**

**_Club Raché_ **

**Eleen Jiroh -** owner and sometimes bar tender of  ** _Club Raché_**

 

**_Kulta Kulos_ **

**Cédric Clair (** née Holdfast) - an adopted member of the Holdfast who contracted himself out into indentured learning at _**Kulta Kulos**_ in hopes of becoming an  _Insequor_ , the very most talented and coveted of Détente's courtesans.

 

_**Runic Guild** _

**Professor Jules Compere** \- Head Runemaster

 

**The Erudite** **Spire** ****

_**Wordsmithing Guild** _

_**Alchemists Guild** _

**Jonji Ibra** \- An Alchemical Apprentice

 

**RELIGION**

 

 **Sanc (** _patron Sanc used as middle name_ **)**

 **Stefan** (Caz-nav) Inventor of indoor plumbing, Sanc of hygiene and inventions to improve living conditions

 

 **Matchio** (Jogit) created the short/long style of fencing, Sanc of hopeless duels for honor or morally grey deeds on the side of the greater good

 

 **Clara** (Gavreau) Sanc of culinary arts and abundance of harvest. Original tender of the Holdfast fruit trees, piloted the bench gardens and invented modern culinary arts

 

 **Solène** (Proudom) Sanc of medicine and healing herbs. Founded the modern day **_Apothecary Guild_ ** and wrote many of the books that are still in use today

 

 **Maxime** (Laurent) Sanc of notation and recordkeeping, patron of books, files, treasuries and any and all clerical work. Was the original keeper of the books during the Shattering and managed to keep all the funds and items straight despite apocalyptic disaster. Founder of the organization that became **_The Erudite Spire_ **.

 

**Followers of Embrien**

**Embrien** was the original holder of the Scepter of Power and used it to imbue her generals and fight for the Empyre until the Shattering.

 

**Wai-Tau**

**Sea -** _puqun_ of Life

 **Sky -** _puqun_ of Light

 **_Karak-Roh -_ ** _puqun_ of Darkness

 

**Noble Families**

**_Noir (Blade Dancers)_ **

**Tristan -** Betrothed to **_Dominique Kléber_ **. 

**_LeFeuvre (Fire Dancers)_ **

**_Kléber (Blood Singers)_ **

**Dominique -** betrothed to **_Tristan Noir_ **. 

 **_Ecktor (Lesser Storm-Callers) (_ ** _merchant upstart household from a distantly related cousin of a Noble Family)_ Their fortune is derived from being the first Merchants to commission rolling tables and set-up permanent storefronts in the Rivalé Market

**_Bacque (Storm-Callers)_ **

_**Sardou (Greenmages)** _

**Author's Note:**

> These chapters will be nowhere near as long as WtSRitE, but they are leading to a far different chapter in my life as a whole. 
> 
> If you desire the ending to WtSRitE, the two new chapters have been posted with my notes and outlines.


End file.
